HI
I'm sure this is a frequently asked question, but I'm stumped...
Running an F330 (4.2a) on some sun 2.5.1 systems.
/var/adm/messages gives :
May 12 23:51:52 cleats unix: NFS write error on host hardrock: Stale NFS file handle. May 12 23:51:52 cleats unix: (file handle: 939e1400 577cd30c 0 856f1000 49ee7326 0 2ae0500 51356400)
We have seen this message when two ksh processes running on two DIFFERENT NFS clients both use the SAME .history file. Note that two ksh processes on the same host can safely use the same .history file.
This situation can easily happen if you have several workstations that mount home directories from a central NFS server. If a user has login sessions on two workstations, he is probably using the same history file in each session.
I would be very interested to know why this happens. It is a NFS and ksh problem and is not limited to Netapp filers. We've seen it on Solaris and AIX NFS servers, too. We've only seen the problem with ksh.
We work around this problem by recommending that folks use different history files on different hosts. In my home directory I have a directory called .history and in my .profile I have this:
HISTFILE=$HOME/.history/`hostname`
Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu phone: 804-924-0640
University of Virginia ITC Unix Support