NFS Services Administrator's Guide (B.11.31.03) August 2008

□ Verify that the filesystem you are trying to unmount is not a mount-point of another
filesystem.
□ Verify that the filesystem is not exported. In HP-UX 11i v3, an exported filesystem
keeps the filesystem busy.
“Stale File Handle” Message
A “stale file handle” occurs when one client removes an NFS-mounted file or
directory that another client is accessing. The following sequence of events explains
how it occurs:
Table 5-1 Stale File Handle Sequence of Events
NFS client 2NFS client 1
% cd /proj1/source
1
% cd /proj1
2
% rm -Rf source
3
% ls
.:Stale File Handle
4
If a server stops exporting a directory that a client has mounted, the client will receive
a stale file handle error. Stale file handles also occur if you restore the NFS
server’s file systems from a backup or randomize the inode numbers with fsirand(1M).
□ If the stale file handle occurred because someone removed a file or directory that
was in use, or because a server stopped exporting a directory that was in use,
follow these steps:
1. Enter the /usr/bin/cd command to move out of the NFS-mounted directory
that is causing the problem, then try unmounting the directory:
/usr/bin/cd /..
/usr/sbin/umount directory
2. If the directory cannot be unmounted because it is busy (in use), enter the
following commands to kill the processes using the directory and to try again
to unmount it:
/usr/sbin/fuser -ck local_mount_point
/usr/sbin/umount local_mount_point
3. If the directory still cannot be unmounted, reboot the client.
4. To avoid stale file handles caused by users deleting NFS-mounted files, try
using a source code control system, like Revision Control System (RCS). A
source code control system allows only one user at a time to modify a file or
Common Problems with NFS 133