I have had problems with emacs as well.  I found that emacs would
create lockfiles (symlinks in the file's directory) when a file was
modified to protect against simultaneous edits.  Sometimes these would
get confused and point oddly (which I suspect is a coda bug).  I
didn't have time to track it down, so I recompiled emacs not to do
this, and then forgot about it.  I had the problem while connected,
though (not sure if I tried disconnected).

        Greg Troxel <gdt_at_ir.bbn.com>