Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:36:25 -0700 (MST)
From: Mark Lehrer <mark@tpsit.com>
To: linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Time to declare war on "stale nfs file handle"
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.1302191507240.5816@shell>
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Sender: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org


I set up a pair of servers with DRBD, Pacemaker, and a virtual IP address.  I am mounting with NFSv3 & TCP.  The /etc/exports entry looks like this:

/nfs/volume01   *(rw,no_root_squash,fsid=778,insecure,async)


Failing between nodes seems to work well whenever I am testing it.
However, it seems that whenever I get into a situation where it has
been running for awhile and then I fail over, clients get the dreaded
Stale NFS file handle error on any open files.  In this case they are
VM images, which means lots of rebooting.

What should I do to prevent this error from happening?  I didn't have any
luck with exportfs -f.  Unfortunately this is a tough one to duplicate so
I am just trying to prepare a few tests for the next time it happens.

Also, I understand that NFSv4 is not quite as stateless as the older versions.
Will this kind of arrangement have potential data loss issues on NFSv4?

Thanks,
Mark