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Reproduce NFS Stale File Handle

1 Overview

Setup an NFS lab.
Reproduce the ‘Stale File Handle’ error:
- Scenario 1: Delete while open.

2 Lab

Setup lab: Network File System (NFS).
VM1 acts as NFS server.

vm1$ exportfs -v
/srv/nfs 192.0.0.0/24(sync,wdelay,hide,no_subtree_check,sec=sys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash)

vm1$ showmount -a
192.0.0.10:/srv/nfs
192.0.0.20:/srv/nfs

VM2 acts as NFS client.

vm2$ df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
192.0.0.10:/srv/nfs       5.6G    221.0M      5.1G   4% /mnt/nfs

3 Reproduce Stale File

3.1 Delete while Open

If the server deletes a file or directory while the client currently has open, the inode held by client become invalid. The further actions to the inode will fail with ‘Stale file handle’ error.

Server.

Step 1: Create a directory.

vm1$ mkdir /srv/nfs/test

Step 3: Delete the directory.

vm1$ rm -rf /srv/nfs/test

Client.

Step 2: Go to the directory.

vm2$ cd /mnt/nfs/test

Step 4: List files.

vm2:/mnt/nfs/test$ ls
ls: .: Stale file handle