How to close devices which have been left open?

[Herschel]

Erik P. Olsen wrote:

>It often happens when I use my scanner that it hits a bug which leaves
>it in an open state and thus becomes unavailable until the system has
>been rebooted. 
>
>Does a command exist which would take a device such as a scanner out of
>the open state?
>
>I am using sane-backends for avision version 1.0.15 and FC3 fully
>updated. The scanner is scsi attached as /dev/sg0.
>
>  
>
What about a umount?  You will need to know where it is mounted on /mnt
be action as root(su in) and it might not work.  I have gotten "busy"
with a usb flash drive on this machine.

If you are stopped check for the process and use the kill command on the
process id.  I have not done that myself, so I <b>strongly</b> suggest
you run the mount command to confirm the device is still not mounted.

I would assume that many others have experience far exceeding mine,
hence, if worried wait for their suggestions.  However, the first will
do no harm provided you check to confirm the umount command did succeed.