[NBLUG/talk] What does this mean?

Andrew argonaut at softhome.net
Tue Jul 1 18:12:01 PDT 2003


On Tue, 1 Jul 2003 08:46:40 -0700
"Radford Spaeth" <rspaeth at adobe.com> wrote:

> 
> I created a directory on a floppy, moved some file in it, and
> tried to look at the files (using ls) but I got the following
> response: Ls: .:stale nfs file handle
> 
> What does this mean and how do I get rid of it?
> 
> Radford

Hey, Radford,

Still stuck? Sun's glossary has this to say:

file handle: (n.) In the NFS system environment, a data structure
that enables systems to uniquely identify files over the network.
A stale NFS file handle contains data with a creation date that
does not match the file to which it refers.

Clear as mud? Good!

Actually, I haven't the faintest idea why you'd be getting a NFS
error with a local floppy (it *is* local isn't it?), but here's
something you can try:

First, make sure Linux doesn't think there are any floppy-related
file systems mounted: type "du" and look for any floppy (a.k.a.
"fd0" for the first floppy drive) stuff. If you see anything,
unmount it with the "umount" command (you may need to be root to
do this).

Then, with the floppy in question in the drive, re-mount it with
this command "mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy". (/mnt/floppy
is my example mount point; change if you have a different mount
point for the floppy. If the file system on the floppy is ext2
instead of DOS, change "vfat" to "ext2".) Try to do this as your
normal user. If you get an error message from mount, try mounting
as root.

Try again to access your files on the floppy.

That's about all the help I can give you for this problem. If it
doesn't work, maybe someone else on the list can add to or
correct my advice. Otherwise, try googling for the error message.

Good luck.

A.



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