What does "Stale NFS file handle" mean?

[Michael Yang <michael.yxf@gmail.com>]

When I list files under my $HOME, I found following two files that can not be accessed:

ls: cannot access .xsession-errors: Stale NFS file handle
ls: cannot access .Xauthority: Stale NFS file handle
total 2384
-?????????   ? ?       ?            ?                ? .xsession-errors
-?????????   ? ?       ?            ?                ? .Xauthority

It looks like a remote access from NFS system from error message. But it is my $HOME, which is a ext2 system. This is the entry in my /etc/fstab
/dev/sda8       /home           ext2    defaults        0       2

This error is probably causing another problem of accessing my $HOME files from GTK-based application. When I "open -> file" from a gtk-based application to open a file under $HOME, I can not see any files of $HOME from the "open..file" dialog.

Anyone can help me with this?

Thanks very much.
Michael.