HowTo: Fix the annoying ‘Unable to connect via USB. Device storage in use’ error on the N900 without rebooting

If you connect the N900 to a computer via USB frequently, you will sooner or later encounter this error where the N900 will refuse to be used as external media.

This is because a program (or programs) is accessing files in the /home/user/MyDocs folder. To fix the problem, the program(s) in question needs to be found and stopped. To find the program(s), open a root terminal and type

 lsof | grep MyDocs

This will display the programs accessing the MyDocs folder something similar to this:

Nokia-N900-42-11:~# lsof | grep MyDocs
sh        3474       user  cwd    DIR      179,1    65536       4326 /home/user/MyDocs/tmp

The second column displays the process-ID of the program (in RED above). Now, terminate the program with this command (repeat for multiple programs):

kill 3474

Now, run the lsof command again (press UP arrow to go back) and make sure the program is not displayed. If it is still running, execute this:

kill -9 3474

Reconnect the USB cable and you should now be able to use the N900 as external media.

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