LinuxHostingSupport

While starting a VPS, you may receive a “vzquota Device or resource busy” message as follows

# vzctl start VEID
 vzquota : (error) Quota syscall for id xxx: Device or resource busy
 vzquota : (error) Possible reasons:
 vzquota : (error) - Container's root is already mounted
 vzquota : (error) - there are opened files inside Container's
 private area
 vzquota : (error) your current working directory is inside
 Container's private area
 vzquota : (error) Use -v option to see currently opened file(s).
 Running vzquota on failed for Container xxx

The error message indicates 2 things:

1) There are some open files inside the Containers private area. To list those open files, execute

lsof 2> /dev/null | egrep '/vz/root/xxx|/vz/private/xxx'

where, xxx is the VPS ID. If the open files are listed, close them and start the VPS.

2) The second reason is you are in the containers private directory while starting the VPS. i.e. the private area of the VPS is /vz/private/xxx and your current working directory while starting the VPS is inside /vz/private/xxx.

Check the current working directory:

# pwd

if the output is something like /vz/private/veid, get out of the private directory and start the container

# cd
# vzctl start veid