NFS help

[Rick Stevens]

brad.mugleston at comcast.net wrote:
> I'm trying again to get an NFS system set up on my home network.
> The book I have says I need to add to my /etc/fstab file a line
> like this
> 
> mailserver:/var/spool/mail /var/spool/mail nfs timeo=20,intr
> 
> When I do that I get the error
> 
> mount: can't get address for mailserver
> 
> and yes the machine I'm looking for is named mailserver.
> 
> I've had this problem before and ended up getting around it by
> giving the server a fixed IP but if possible I'd rather not do
> that (no reason, I'm just trying to learn the correct way).
> 
> So, any help out there?

"mailserver" must be resolvable, either via DNS or in your /etc/hosts
file.  In other words, if you can "ping mailserver", you should be
able to mount it.

If, however, "ping mailserver" ends up in a message such as:

	ping: Unknown host mailserver

then it ain't resolving.  The error you're seeing is mount_nfs' version
of "unknown host mailserver".
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.  -
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