[conspire] having trouble getting 2nd partition formatted with GNU parted

[Tony Godshall]

> > (parted) mkpart primary ext3 960GB 1000GB Error: Error informing the
> > kernel about modifications to partition /dev/sdb2 -- Device or
> > resource busy. ...

> I don't fully understand that, myself.  You might be able to use "lsof"
> (list open files) to find out what's keeping that resource busy. ...

If you attempted a partitioning before, maybe swap is using it?

# cat /proc/swaps

If so, you'll want to swapoff

Is it mounted?

# mount|grep sdb

If so you'll want to umount

> _However_, what I'd do is what I pretty nearly always do when I want to
> do partitioning:  Haul out my favourite live CD, boot it, and use it as
> my partitioning environment.