Is the NFS support compiled into the kernel or loaded as a module. If its a module then its possible it isn't loaded in time for the first line in fstab, but is loaded by the time the rest are called, or you mount manually. I had a similar problem with a Nvidia driver and X which was solved by putting the module in /etc/modules so it loads on boot.I have an fstab, which after the usual local disk entries has nfs entries that look like: aservername:/s /s nfs rw,bg,intr,proto=tcp 0 0 aservername:/alum /alum nfs rw,bg,intr,proto=tcp 0 0 aservername:/users /users nfs rw,bg,intr,proto=tcp 0 0 aservername:/u2 /u2 nfs rw,bg,intr,proto=tcp 0 0 etc. On boot, the first mount consistently fails to mount. It manually mounts fine. If I switch entries around, the same thing happens - the first entry fails to mount. Any ideas?
Could also try compiling support in the kernel if this doesn't work. HTHWackojacko