Why do I see this message in my syslog: "kernel: VFS: Busy inodes after unmount. Self-destruct in 5 seconds. Have a nice day..."?

Solution In Progress - Updated -

Issue

  • The following message is seen in the kernel log or the messages file
VFS: Busy inodes after unmount of 0:14. Self-destruct in 5 seconds.  Have a nice day...
  • System reboots or kernel crashes sometime after the above message is printed
  • Sometime after the above message, the kernel crashes when trying to access an inode which contained an invalid super_block pointer.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (all versions)
  • often seen with autofs / NFS mounts on NFS client systems

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