Steps to reproduce (basically, get "Stale file handle" error on bind-mounted nfs dir): 1. Use this dummy /etc/exports: /var/tmp 127.0.0.1(rw,sync,all_squash,anonuid=1000) 2. Mount it to /mnt/test: $ mkdir /mnt/test $ mount localhost:/var/tmp /mnt/test 3. Bind-mount a subdirectory of it to /mnt/test2: $ mkdir /mnt/test/reproduce $ mkdir /mnt/test2 $ mount --bind /mnt/test/reproduce /mnt/test2 4. Remove the bind-mounted dir $ rmdir /mnt/test/reproduce 5. Check that /mnt/test2 is not happy about that $ ls /mnt/test2 ls: cannot access '/mnt/test2': Stale file handle This is expected. 6. Try to unmount /mnt/test2 $ umount /mnt/test2 umount.nfs4: /mnt/test2: Stale file handle This is not expected! There is no way how to unmount the directory. It's mounted forever. Even reboot gets stuck. Reported in Fedora: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1854379 This seems to work as expected in 5.6.x kernels, started happening in 5.7 and affects 5.8 too