How to decode this cryptic NFS write error a Solaris client system, found in
the /var/adm/messages log file?
Feb 26 11:54:26 clssunp120 nfs: [ID 626546 kern.notice] NFS write error on \ host nfs1_prd: Stale NFS file handle. Feb 26 11:54:26 clssunp120 nfs: [ID 702911 kern.notice] (file handle: 40260001 \ ffffffff a0000 1dc24 d5 a0000 2 0)
The problem is that the file handle specification is used and interpreted internally by the NFS client subsystem, and evolved with each release of the operating system. Luckily, we need only two fields (on the eight printed in the record file). The first field is the file system id (or device id) and is generally the first number of the file handle. The second field of interest is the inode number, which is found at the four, or five reference in the file handle (please note that the inode is reported in hexadecimal format).
So, consider the following file handle:
40260001 ffffffff a0000 1dc24 d5 a0000 2 0
We can now know which file system is the culprit:
# grep 40260001 /etc/mnttab nfssrv:/t/tools/SunOS/isa /tools/isa nfs rw,intr,soft,dev=40260001 1172569690
Translate the inode number to decimal, to be used in conjunction with the
find(1) utility:
# echo "ibase=16; `echo 1dc24 | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]`" | bc 121892
Last, the file name a process is currently trying to reference can be found easily with:
# find /tools/isa -mount -inum 121892 -print 2> /dev/null
Search for the info doc 73152 on the SunSolve web site for more information in this subject (you must have a registered Sun support customer account to be able to view this document).
