Common Issues Resulting In An ERROR Status

Important:The product name for this user guide has changed from Foundation and Cloudscape to Business Service Discovery and Migration Planning.

The following are commonly seen issues that result in an ERROR status, and the potential for an inability to continue collection on a device.

Stale File Handle SSH Error

Stale File Handle SSH Error

Item

Description

Command

df -P

Error

df: /some/mount/point: Stale file handle

Result

FAIL

Description

The df utility is used to collect the filesystems present on a Linux/UNIX device. In some cases, particularly related to NFS, the kernel thinks that a filesystem is mounted when it is not, or an NFS filesystem has been detached. According to the POSIX standards, the df utility will return a non-zero exit status on an error, which it does in this case. In order to ensure that all filesystems mounted on the system are properly accounted for, in the case that df returns an error it is considered a critical command failure.

Recommendation

Investigate the system in question to determine why df is unable to report on certain filesystems, and fully mount or unmount the problematic filesystem. It may also be possible to cause the system's cache of mounted filesystems to resync.