Cannot umount -f device from dead NFS server

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bjornmu
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Cannot umount -f device from dead NFS server

Post by bjornmu »

My secondary desktop (running Fedora 13...) just died. :( I think the CPU is dead.

I had mounted the home directory on that box to a directory directly under / on my primary desktop (Mint 14). Now I can't unmount it even with umount -f, it just hangs. Attempts to run e.g. ls / hangs forever and can't even be killed.

What's the point of umount -f if it can't force it?

Order is already in for a new box which will be running Mint 17 Mate. Kinda good timing but also bad timing since I was going to do that very soon anyway and retire the old box. :roll:
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 3 times in total.
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bjornmu
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Re: Cannot umount -f device from dead NFS server

Post by bjornmu »

Found it! Well it's not perfect. And I was half way to figuring it out myself too. http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/ans ... tions_thre

In essence (as superuser):

Code: Select all

ifconfig eth0:1 <IP of dead host> netmask 255.255.255.0
ifconfig eth0:1 up
umount -f <mount point>
[.....wait a little....]
ifconfig eth0:1 down
So you "fake" the dead host, and for me that resulted in umount eventually failing (igil is the host name):

umount.nfs: /igil: Stale NFS file handle
umount.nfs: /igil: Stale NFS file handle

BUT: after a while it came back and I had to repeat it and then manually remove it from /etc/mtab. And now I thought /igil would revert to being a normal directory but instead I still get Stale NFS file handle when trying to access it.
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bjornmu
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Re: Cannot umount -f device from dead NFS server

Post by bjornmu »

This is NOT solved. Even though I kind of umounted it and removed it manually from /etc/mtab, programs that explore the file system still insist on stat'ing the dead device and get stuck. So I cannot start xfburn for example. :(

And now after some more attempts to fix stuff I could no longer do ls / without hang and I had to redo the trick in my previous post. Now it looks like this, from 'ls -l /":

d????????? ? ? ? ? ? igil/

Any attempts to do anything with /igil result in "/igil: Stale NFS file handle" What else can I do to get rid of it? Is there no way out except reboot? If I *can* reboot, I fear I will have to cut the power and hope for the best. :shock:

Addendum: if I *keep* the fake host up by using a second interface it seems that I can hide the problem. xfburn now managed to start. :)
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