am-utils not mounting on first try
 

I'm using am-utils (amd) to automount an lvm raid array from a Linux server on a Linux client. Both systems running Mythbuntu (Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS). Almost every time I try to access the filesystem while it's not mounted, I get an I/O error on the client. But after several more attempts, it finally mounts and works fine. It seems to have more to do with the amount of time that passes rather than the number of attempts. If the first attempt fails, then I wait 30 seconds and try again, it mounts. I've tried setting the nfs_retry_interval parameter in /etc/am-utils/amd.conf to 300 (30 seconds) but it didn't help.

am-utils Version: 6.2+rc20110530-3.2ubuntu1

DHCP/DNS issue
 

I've resolved this problem. My ISP's router, which also acts as a DHCP and DNS server, issues two DNS server addresses via DHCP; one which is the router itself, and another which is the ISP's DNS server. Systems on my network configured to use DHCP will alternate between using these two DNS servers. However, the DNS server in the router is the only one that will resolve the addresses of machines on the local network, so if a machine is using the outside DNS server it won't be able to see the local NFS server. I switched all of my machines to use DHCP for obtaining their IP address only and configured the DNS server addresses manually and that solved the problem.