WHat is "Stale NFS handle"?

[deke at valhalla.ee.rochester.edu]

In article <495 at larry.UUCP> jwp at larry.uucp asks about "Stale NFS handle"

I tried to reply by mail, but couldn't reach you.  Here is my reponse.
I've cross posted to a more appropriate newsgroup (I think) in hopes
that the folks there can do a better job than I.  I've also directed
followups there...

  In my experience, "stale NFS handle" means that the directory which
  is your current working directory is an NFS mount that has 'gone away'
  for some reason.  In other words, the 'handle' itself is a pointer to
  something no longer there....
  
  Off-the-top-of-my-head possibilities:
  
  1) The server with that partition went down (and came back up?)
  2) The server with that partition unmounted that partition
  3) the machine you are on somehow had that partition unmounted
  
  Good luck.  Hope other responses are more complete than mine!
  
      ^Deke Kassabian,   deke at ee.rochester.edu   or   ur-valhalla!deke
   Univ of Rochester, Dept of EE, Rochester, NY 14627     (+1 716-275-3106)