[Leaplist] Any suggestions on resolving "Stale NFS file handle" errors?

[Richard F. Ostrow Jr.]

<quote who="Bryan J Smith">
> Yes, there are many immature Linux NFS servers and clients.  But in
> kernel 2.6, on select distros, it's quite mature.  I would argue NFS
> 2.6.1x is mature -- e.g., FC 6 / RHEL 5 (at least with their patches).
> There may be other distros, although some distros ship things that are
> purposely a compatibility nightmare with NFS services (and you have to
> read the release notes to find that out).

In the cases I've been looking at, it's been with the 2.6.21 - 2.6.26
series of kernels. I had fewer problems with the older kernels, but if I
go back to the older stuff, I can't use the newer video capture stuff I
need from the newer kernels...

> What distros?  It does make a bit of difference.  Several distros
> honestly don't care about NFS, and use the stock kernel.  I say that to
> several kernel maintainers at a select distributor, and they fall into
> shock.  ;)

I've been a Gentoo guy for several years... the more machines I pick up,
the shorter the compile times (as long as the architectures are "similar"
enough, (ie, 32-bit PC can compile any 32-bit PC, but not 64-bit... and
vice-versa)). Usually only takes a few seconds to compile most things,
with a few exceptions.

At any rate, I think you were getting at what kernel config I'm using...
which can be summed up with a 'grep NFS /usr/src/linux/.config':

CONFIG_NFS_FS=y
CONFIG_NFS_V3=y
# CONFIG_NFS_V3_ACL is not set
# CONFIG_NFS_V4 is not set
# CONFIG_NFSD is not set
CONFIG_ROOT_NFS=y
CONFIG_NFS_COMMON=y

The server is a FreeBSD 7.2 machine with the following /etc/exports:

/usr/diskless   -alldirs -maproot=root  madusa

client options are (given from 'mount' command):
rw,remount,noatime,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,tcp,nolock,addr=*hidden_internal_address*

removing the 'nolock' option prevents the machine from booting due to the
rpc.statd startup order mentioned earlier.

... this is from a 2.6.26-r3 kernel (uname -a yields: Linux madusa
2.6.26-gentoo-r3 #1 SMP Tue Dec 2 21:33:10 EST 2008 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm)
64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux)

If you can spot anything in there that looks like it may be causing this,
let me know... but it looks pretty reasonable to me.

>> In general, I'm getting tired of the linux implementation of NFS, and
>> especially the common init-scripts implementation of NFS (like mounting
>> the root file system R/W before starting nfs.statd and nfs.lockd, which
>> makes booting with locking support impossible).
>
> I think you're talking about legacy issues, although there are several
> reasons for that order.

Out of curiosity, what reasons may those be? It's been driving me up the
wall for years from the problems it's caused.

-- 
Life without passion is death in disguise


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