Linux – error reading input file: Stale NFS file handle

Did you reboot the NFS server? Did you do some sort of bulk move, rename or deletion of files or directories on the server? Are the clients changing files that other clients are trying to access?

The normal source of a "stale NFS file handle" is files being removed on the server. Especially if a directory is removed. The usual fix is unmounting and remounting the volume, or rebooting the client. With some NFS server implementations, rebooting the server can cause this error, too.

It sounds like there's something else going on here than the usual causes and more detail might be needed.

Don't forget that NFS is not a POSIX compliant filesystem. It is very close to POSIX compliance, which is what people usually trip up on. One of the areas which expose it's non conformance is around deleting and renaming files and especially directories.

My advice is to avoid, unless the application is specifically coded to work with NFS, having two remote processes access the same file on an NFS volume.