Automatically solve rm cannot remove path : device or resource busy error

Question

I am trying to remove a directory /path/to/dir using the rm -rf command. Unfortunately I get the error

rm: cannot remove '/path/to/dir/.nfsdda293a660f276ca0000000a': Device or resource busy

After a little bit of research, I realized that I need to find which process is using this file before I can delete it:

lsof /path/to/dir/.nfsdda293a660f276ca0000000a

which will return something with the PID associated with the process:

COMMAND   PID
python    28594

I then kill the PID and try again to delete, but I still get the initial error.

How to force the script to delete /path/to/dir automatically within a script, without manual intervention?

user_18933758 · Answer

This worked for me:

lsof +D /path

That will recurse through the filesystem under /path, so beware doing it on large directory trees.

Once you know which processes have files open, you can exit those apps, or kill them with the kill(1) command.