Re: Need some help please with an NFS mount in /etc/fstab

OK, generally you should NOT put a file system in /etc/fstab, this is 
"unreliable" (for some definiation of "unreliable").

A better option is to use autofs:

sudo apt install autofs

Then put the mount point in /etc/auto.master or in a file included by 
/etc/auto.master.

What will happen is that you can reference the file system *as if* it is
always mounted, without it being always mounted (assuming the 'Pi is up and
running). The automunt daemon will mount it whenever you reference it and will
unmount it if you don't reference it for some time period (a config option, 5 
minutes in the default config),



At Wed, 5 Aug 2026 12:53:27 +0100 Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> I want to add an NFS mount point to my desktop machine so that it can
> 'see' some files on a headless Raspberry Pi.
> 
> I have the basics working, I have installed NFS on the Pi and have
> exported the directory required. I can manually mount it on my Debian
> 13 desktop machine.
> 
> However I'm not quite clear how to add the mount point to /etc/fstab
> so that it will normally always be mounted but won't hang the desktop
> system's boot if the Raspberry Pi is not running or the mount fails
> for some other reason.
> 
> If I put 'nofail' as an option in the fstab entry will it stay failed
> or will it retry? Also would that cause a delay in boot if the mount
> isn't available?
>