Re: Portmapper Problems (fwd)

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Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
address@hidden             WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 16:43:35 -0600 (MDT)
From: David Himes <address@hidden>
To: Ken Waters <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: Portmapper Problems

According to Ken Waters:
> 
> We are trying to set up a new primary LDM machine, running on Redhat
> Linux 6.0.  This machine was successfully running LDM just fine a few
> weeks ago.  Since then, several changes were made to it relating to
> firewall installation.
> 
> Now, the LDM does not seem to start correctly.  It "hangs" on the
> 'ldmadmin start' command.  I double-checked all the root-level
> pre-installation steps (/etc/services, /etc/rpc, /etc/syslog.conf, etc.)
> and they are all okay.  Now, going on to your troubleshooting section,
> when I issue the "rpcinfo -p <hostname>" command, I get an error that
> rpc is unable to access the portmapper.  I issue the "rpcinfo -d 300029
> 4" command but that does not seem to fix the problem.
> 
> I'm sorry I can't include snippets of the log files right now because we
> did an emergency switch of the machines back so that we can continue
> serving data.  I hope to be able to provide more information a little
> bit later once I regain access to the box.
> 
> Thanks!!
> 
> Ken Waters
> Southern Region HQ, NWS

Ken,

I can't answer the questions you have, but can tell you that most RPC
based programs need to register with the portmapper.  The portmapper
(sometimes called rpcbind) is a system process that nominally allows
RPC programs to register their program, version and port numbers so
that other applications can talk to them (a rendezvous point).  I don't
know what Linux calls the portmapper, but it is probably portmapper or
rpcbind.

rpcinfo -p returning: "can't find portmapper" means to me that the
portmapper simply isn't running.  It is usually started in one of the
early startup scripts.  NFS, mountd, statd, lockd all use the
portmapper to register their RPC program numbers/ports, so I would
guess that those services are disabled as well.  If the portmapper
isn't running then rpcinfo -d 300029 won't do anything, except return
some error.

The portmapper has often come under scrutiny as being a security hole
so it is not surprising that in the process of securing that machine,
network services that were deemed as a high (or potential) security
risk were disabled.

My comments are in addition to what Robb mentioned in his previous
message.

--

Dave


-- 

Dave