What does errno 151 (ESTALE) in Solaris mean?

ESTALE

Stale nfs file handle

ESTALE is Solaris errno 151 (Stale NFS file handle). Solaris NFS found that a file handle no longer identifies the server object it once named.

A stale NFS handle usually means the server object was removed, replaced, or changed identity while the client retained the old handle. Re-resolve the pathname and correlate server-side filesystem changes instead of retrying I/O on the stale handle.

What to check

• Reopen the path and refresh cached directory entries.
• Check whether the file or directory was removed, replaced, exported differently, or served after a filesystem remount.
• Do not continue using the stale file handle as if it were a transient network timeout.

References

• Oracle Solaris intro(2): error numbers
• illumos errno.h definitions
• POSIX errno.h