WHat is "Stale NFS handle"?

[Dan Davison]

In article <873 at auspex.UUCP>, guy at auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
> >Yesterday, I could no longer access some files, and got the
> >message "stale NFS handle".  What circumstances cause this?
> 
> A "file handle" (the message under SunOS, at least, is "stale NFS file
> handle", not just "stale NFS handle") is the cookie used in NFS requests
> to refer to a file. [...]
> A "stale" file handle is one that no longer validly refers to a file.
> This can happen because: [...]
> 
> 	8) there's a bug in the server such that, for example, rebooting
> 	   the server invalidates file handles (there was such a bug in
> 	   an alpha version of SunOS 4.0, which was quite annoying; it
> 	   was, as far as I know, fixed later - as I remember it, the
> 	   problem was that instead of using the major/minor of the file
> 	   system's device in the file handle, it used the index of the
> 	   file system in the system mount table, which can change when
> 	   you reboot the machine);


Well, I hate to contradict GH, but at least here (SunOS 4.0.1) it's
still not fixed.  One of our three servers hangs about once a day
(a YP binding problem :-< ) and one of the 18 or so clients which
mount that server's partitions will start complaining about a "stale
NFS file handle".  I wish there was a way to fix this; sometimes
umount/mount will do it and sometimes only a reboot will do (the umount
hangs).  Curiously, it's almost always the same file system on
that server, perhaps because it is one of the most heavily used.

dan davison/theoretical biology/t-10 ms k710/los alamos national laboratory
los alamos, nm 875545/dd at lanl.gov(arpa)/dd at lanl.uucp(new)/..cmcl2!lanl!dd
"Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to
undertake.  It is not easy.  It is not a gift given, but a choice made,
and the choice may be a hard one." ...Le Guin, _The Farthest Shore_