How do I configure Machine1 to auto mount /mydir from Machine2? Or, what should the fstab look like?

Should I use the automount or fstab?

I'm using Fedora Core 2.

Doc:/home3 /home3 nfs auto,rw 0 0

This is exactly how my fstab looks and it still won't mount at bootup.

During bootup when it tries to mount nfs filesystems it pauses and then returns "can't get address for Doc" and fails. Yet once the machine is up and running I can do a mount -a, it reads the fstab and mounts Doc:/home3. I am confused...

You have to put the IP of the machine named 'Doc' in your fstab, say it is 10.0.0.1, try :

10.0.0.1:/home3 /home3 nfs auto,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,rw 0 0

I added rsize=8192 and wsize=8192 to accelerate file transfer rate, feel free to remove them

I used the fully qualified name instead and it worked... with one exception. The first nfs mount won't mount, the rest do. Here's a copy of my fstab:

[root@Bubba etc]# more fstab
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
Doc.dville.com:/home3 /home3 nfs auto,rw 0 0
Doc.dville.com:/home3/pres /pres nfs auto,rw 0 0
Doc.dville.com:/red /red nfs auto,rw 0 0

/home3/pres and /red will mount on bootup but, /home3 will not. What the frag?

Does the mountpoint exist? Is there any errors in dmesg or syslog?
Is your /etc/exports on the server ok? Does it mount afterwards when you say
"mount /home3"?

Yes. No. Yes. Yes.

Very strange indeed.

If you permutate the order of the mounts in fstab, is it still the /home3 that is not mounted, or is it the first one that doesn't get mounted?

Just the first one... whatever it may be.

The workaround is to copy the first line.

server:/dir1 /dir1 nfs auto 0 0
server:/dir1 /dir1 nfs auto 0 0
server:/dir2 /dir2 nfs auto 0 0
server:/dir3 /dir3 nfs auto 0 0

With it written this way it mounts dir1 on bootup. Still don't know why though.