When listing a directory on an NFS share, directory listing fails half way through with 'ls: reading directory .: Too many levels of symbolic links'

Issue

• When listing a directory on the NFS client, the directory listing will fail after listing some of the files in the directory with:

ls: reading directory .: Too many levels of symbolic links'

• The following message is visible in /var/log/messages of the NFS client:

Oct  2 18:24:47 hostname kernel: NFS: directory server.example.com/nfs contains a readdir loop.Please contact your server vendor.  

• Duplicate files begin appearing on NFS shares.
• Duplicate files on same directory.