RPC: failed to contact portmap (errno -5)
 

Hello,

I have NFS 4 running on my server and everything works just fine. I can mount shares from my clients and read/write to NFS shares and all that. Though, everytime I start NFS, I get:

RPC: failed to contact portmap (errno -5).

Nothing seems to be failing because NFS starts fine and all the services are up and running.

I have no /etc/hosts.allow or .deny and I have no iptables or any sort of firewall. It is a pretty isolated network.

Does anybody know how I can stop this error message from being displayed?

Thanks

Hi.

I've your only looking for a way to disable the error message, I guess you could pipe the std err output to dev null like this "service nfs start 2>/dev/null". Or you can even add the piping to the script itself.

But why NFS works when portmap doesn't I don't understand. What does "service nfs status" and "service portmap status" show?

I tried piping, but this error still shows up!
That is a good question. Here's the status from portmap and nfs:

> /etc/init.d/nfs status
rpc.mountd is stopped
nfsd is stopped
> /etc/init.d/nfs start
Starting NFS services: [ OK ]
Starting NFS daemon: NFSD: Using /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery as the NFSv4 state recovery directory
NFSD: starting 90-second grace period
[ OK ]
Starting NFS mountd: [ OK ]
> /etc/init.d/nfs status
rpc.mountd (pid 2276) is running...
nfsd (pid 2272 2271 2270 2269 2268 2267 2266 2265) is running...
> /etc/init.d/portmap status
portmap (pid 1707) is running...
> /etc/init.d/nfs restart
Shutting down NFS mountd: [ OK ]
Shutting down NFS daemon: nfsd: last server has exited
nfsd: unexporting all filesystems
RPC: failed to contact portmap (errno -5).
[ OK ]
Shutting down NFS services: [ OK ]
Starting NFS services: [ OK ]
Starting NFS daemon: NFSD: Using /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery as the NFSv4 state recovery directory
NFSD: starting 90-second grace period
[ OK ]
Starting NFS mountd: [ OK ]
> /etc/init.d/nfs status
rpc.mountd (pid 2351) is running...
nfsd (pid 2347 2346 2345 2344 2343 2342 2341 2340) is running...

Do you still get the error message even if your running "service nfs start 2>/dev/null"?

Yes I do! Do you have a solution?

Thanks

What happens if you do this? "service nfs start &>/dev/null"

$ service nfs restart &>/dev/null
nfsd: last server has exited
nfsd: unexporting all filesystems
RPC: failed to contact portmap (errno -5).
NFSD: Using /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery as the NFSv4 state recovery directory
NFSD: starting 90-second grace period

Really? This seems very strange. That command pipes both std out and std err to /dev/null, so you shouldn't get any output at all.

Which shell are you using?

haha I know!!!! It's strange and disturbing at the same time! I'm using bash...

If you have some linux support tech line to call I'd surely make that call now. :)