QGIS » QGIS Application

When Spatialite layers are removed, the connection to the database remains open. This prevents renaming or deleting of the file. The lock remains in place for around 45 to 60 seconds, in most cases.

Example: * Layer > Add Layer > Add Spatialite Layer * Select from database and add * Right click Layer > Remove * Database file is locked

This behaviour also occurs with Python, which gives ‘WindowsError’ in Windows 7, or ‘OSError’ in Xubuntu 14.04.
The Linux terminal gets:
mv: cannot move ‘test.sqlite’ to ‘test2.sqlite’: Text file busy

Further information can be obtained from the following command in Linux:
lsof -r5 +D /path/to/working/directory/

This shows open files every 5 seconds. Opening a layer creates 2 connections to the file, both owned by qgis.bin. One is read/write, the other is read only. On removing the layers, the read only connection remains for around a minute, after which the file can be moved. Sometimes (on Windows) the connection requires a restart of QGIS, or even a reboot, to be cleared.

The behaviour seems similar to #12938, which affects the DB Manager and resulted in it adding extra layers to the registry when spatialite layers were previewed. However, no extra layers are added in this case. Running the DB Manager with `lsof` active shows that it also creates connections that are not closed.