Stale NFS file handle : Windows 2008 R2 and Solaris 10

Recently I faced a scenario where Solaris 10 systems were unable to mount the NFS share from a Windows 2008 R2 system. The mount command was throwing error message as “Stale NFS file handle”.

Upon investigation it turned out to be an issue with securehandlelevel. The is registry key has been explained in here.

Basically, the default value Default is 6. SecureHandleInfo controls the strength of the security on handles given out by NFS Server. We can assign any of the following valid values:

0x0 – Disable all security checks on the NFS handles.

0x1 – Sign the handles given to clients for stronger security.

0x2 – Use IP Address of the client, in addition to other data, to sign the handle.

0x4 – Validate that the parent path of the NTFS field embedded in the handle is actually exported at the time when the handle is exported.

0x6 - Use IP Address of the client in addition to other data, to sign the handle and also validate that the parent path of the NTFS field embedded in the handle is actually exported at the time when the handle is exported.

Based on our experience we do not recommend setting the value to 0. In this case only values worked were 0 and 4. So, we recommend using the value of 4 for this scenario.

HTH.