Jason Thorpe writes:
> When the server reboots, all of the file handles the client has been using
> become "stale".  When the client attempts to use a stale handle, the server
> returns an error, prompting the client to re-negotiate with the server's
> mountd to get a new handle.
> 
> At least, I'm pretty sure that is what happens... someone might want to
> correct me if I got any of that wrong :-)

To my knowledge, file handles are dependent entirely on the ondisk
state, and not on server state. NFS was designed to be fully
stateless, and file handles only become stale if you do something like
bringing down a server, newfs and restore the disk.

Because of this, producing a list of which machines are actively
mounting your files is impossible -- a big administrative headache as
I recall...

Perry