NFS stale file handle

[Amit Manna_6]

Hi,

The following error occurs while i issue a bdf command :

NFS stale file handle.

Can anybody please help.

[Shaikh Imran]

hi,
This means that the NFS filesystems were mounted on this server and now those filesystem are unmounted from the source itslef.
Just check on the other server of which the filesystems were mounted here.
Try to unmount the remotely mounted NFS filesystems.
Try by restarting the nfs daemons on both the servers.
OR
Simply this error will go after reboot.
Do this if this is a test server.


Regards,

[Michael Tully]

This will generally happen when the NFS mount point has become stale for some reason. One reason is that the server which owns the link is not available.

[Brian Hackley]

Amit,

THere is a good white paper on the HP Docs website about how you can force umount that Stale FS instead of reboot. Check it out,

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/3929/ForciblyUnmountingNFSFilesystems.pdf

Hope that helps,

-> Brian Hackley

[Paul Cross_1]

To clarify, a stale NFS file handle is an error you see on the NFS client side when the NFS server has stopped responding for whatever reason. The NFS share has simply gone away.

What to do: Check the NFS server side, find out why the share no longer exists. The beauty of NFS is that as soon as the share is reinstated, the client will be happy (unless the IP # has changed).

[Dani Seely]

Hey Amit,
First of all, are you using /etc/exportfs to mount your client file system or was this mounted by command line?

Secondly, what OS are you using on the server and client?

The message you are getting, "NFS: stale file handle" means that the mount has been lost, possibly due to the client system having gone down, and means you need to re-mount the file system.

Check out the DIAGNOSTICS section of 'man exportfs' or see:
http://www.bga.org/~lessem/psyc5112/usail/man/hpux/exportfs.1.html

If an NFS mounted directory is unexported by exportfs, any access by the client to the directory causes an NFS stale file handle error. However, if exportfs is used to remove a client from the access list of an exported directory, an NFS stale file handle error does not result from any access by the client to the directory.