LVM Stale NFS File Handles (Part 1)

So, here’s an interesting issue

(initramfs) mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec)
none on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,size=10240k,mode=755)
/dev/pudding/root on /mnt type ext3 (rw,errors=continue,data=ordered)

 

So I’m using BusyBox, with an LVM volume mounted on /mnt. Happy?

(initramfs) ls /mnt
ls: /mnt/initrd.img.old: Stale NFS file handle
ls: /mnt/vmlinuz: Stale NFS file handle
ls: /mnt/vmlinuz.old: Stale NFS file handle

Only one directory (was, a while ago) exported by NFS, which isn’t one that is affected, and the box has never mounted anything by NFS. It seems like the error can be caused when a file is open and the disk falls out from underneath it, and an ambiguous error code is sent back which is interpreted as a stale filehandle. Either way, the superblock on this particular FS is corrupted, so the next step would be to attempt to recover using one of the backup superblocks. I’ll attempt this later and let you know how it goes. I’m sure you’ll be on the edge of your seats.