WHat is "Stale NFS handle"?

[Chris Ott]

>I have a VAXstation 2000 running Ultrix 2.2, using NFS
>to use the /usr/local of a MicroVAX II, also running Ultrix.
>Yesterday, I could no longer access some files, and got the
>message "stale NFS handle".  What circumstances cause this?

     I've seen this message once myself. Unfortunately, my experience was
on a Sun. I'm not sure it will apply to your Vax.

     It was the following situation:

     On a server, there was a directory mounted from the root filesystem,
say "dir1". Then, somewhere inside "dir1" was mounted another filesystem,
say "dir2". So, if you wanted to get to "dir2" on the server, you would
use the path "/dir1/dir2".

     For clients, the first thing that came to my mind is that, if you can
get to "dir2" with "/dir1/dir2" on the server, you should be able to do the
same on the clients, but only have to mount "dir1". I was wrong. Any attempt
to get to "dir2", such as "cd /dir1/dir2" would give the message "stale NFS
handle". Both "dir1" and "dir2" have to be mounted on the clients as well
as the server.

     Hope that helps.

Chris

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 Chris Ott
 Computational Fluid Mechanics Lab        Infatuation is blind, not love. A
 University of Arizona                      person in love can see the other's
                                            faults, but loves them anyway.
 Internet: chris at spock.ame.arizona.edu
 UUCP: {allegra,cmcl2,hao!noao}!arizona!amethyst!spock!chris
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