On 10 Jan 2017 14:29, "Chris Green" <cl@isbd.net> wrote:
Is there any way to unmount an ext4 filesystem without shutting down?

I can do it easily by going to single-user mode or removing the
filesystem from /etc/fstab and rebooting but both of these require the
system to be shut down.

However it seems to be impossible otherwise because the journalling
process makes the filesystem busy.  Is this right?

Maybe you can disable journaling. Maybe it was tune2fs or similar that lets you turn it off. Or maybe you can remount with journal disabled?

2nd hit on google "turn off journalling ext4" has lots of info.

Srdj