Reverting to Data ONTAP 6.3 or earlier

Issues you must resolve before reverting

The following sections discuss upgrade issues that you must resolve before reverting to the Data ONTAP 6.3 release family or earlier releases:

Stale file handles on vFiler units

Data ONTAP 6.4 and later releases include a change in the Network File System (NFS) file handle format that is not backward compatible with vFiler systems. If you have defined vFiler storage on your system, and you upgrade to 6.4 or later and then revert to an earlier version, NFS clients might report stale file handles on the vFiler units. To prevent this problem, unmount any NFS clients that are mounted on vFiler units. You can remount them after reverting.

Finding reversion issues for releases earlier than Data ONTAP 6.3

To find reversion issue information for releases earlier than Data ONTAP 6.3, go to the Information Library for Archived Documentation on the NOW site, at http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/archive_docs.shtml, for a list of documentation for earlier releases of Data ONTAP.

Reversion with home directory paths in the cifs_homedir.cfg file

If you upgrade to Data ONTAP 6.3 or later and convert home directory path entries from the cifs.home_dir option to the cifs_homedir.cfg file, then if you revert to an earlier 6.3 release, the storage system will attempt to write as many of the paths as possible back to the registry for the cifs.home_dir option. If some of the paths fail to be written to the registry, you might need to manually transfer the paths from the cifs_homedir.cfg file to the cifs.home_dir option. The cifs_homedir.cfg file remains intact during reversion.