Im trying to mount a remote drive and Im getting the error 'mount point does not exist'

I have added the server name in my hosts file and confirmed the directory exists. Command Im trying is:
mount /// /servername/music/ -o username=JohnDoe

So now Im a bit stuck. I do have samba setup for this same drive and can access via Windows, but not familiar with networking via linux. I have so many ideas but not sure which to try. Should I start reading up on NFS, does that 'music' directory need to be shared, or is there something simple I can be doing?

I eventually want to have this auto mount on boot but lets crawl before we run.

Your command is missing a mount point and the /// part is not correct. For example if you wanted to mount the share on your local /mnt/music then your command should be this.

If that's the mount command you actually tried to use, there are several problem with what you've tried:

1) You have failed to specify the type of file system you're attempting to mount.
2) Your source location syntax in incorrect
3) Your destination location is missing

The error message you received means that there is no directory called servername in the root file system of your Linux system.

Try something like this:

sudo mount -t cifs ///severname/music/ /home/john/Music -o users,defaults,credentials=.credfile

Look at info mount for the options in the cifs or smbfs mount options for a descriptions of the credentials file format and contents. (The smbfs file system type has been depreciated for some time now, and I can't recall if Ubuntu still uses it or it they've moved to the cifs file system type, although I expect that they have.)

Note that the ///servername... is the source file system, and the /home... is the destination location where the source file system is to be connected to the Linux directory tree. That destination should be a directory that exists when the command is executed. If the destination location is not empty, its contents will be hidden until the attached file system is detached from that location. So, in your case, if you have something in your "Music" directory you want to access while you have your SMB directory attached, you should use the mkdir command to create an empty subdirectory of, say, your "Music" directory and then use that empty directory as your mount attach point.

got it, thank you everyone