/mnt directory stalls because of samba shares
 

I am trying to automatically mount several Samba shares when I boot up my linux box. These are shares on a Windows 2003 server. To do so I have edited /etc/fstab with the following line for each of the shares:

//windowsServer/share /mnt/mountpoint smbfs credentials=/etc/samba/passwordFile, user, fmask=774,dmask=774 0 0

When I then login into my linux box (KDE window manager) and I try to access the /mnt directory, the system stalls for ages. It is only after a couple of minutes that I can access the mounted devices and shares in the /mnt directory with no problems.

I have used Ethereal to analyse the Samba messages that the linux box and the windows server interchange during the boot up process, and everything seems correct. The windows shares appear to be mounted without any errors.

However when I try to access the /mnt directory using Konqueror, for example, my linux box stalls as it tries to mount these shares again, even though they have already been mounted at boot up.

I would like to know the cause of this behaviour and what I can do to prevent my system from stalling when I first access /mnt.

Cheers