rpcbind and portmap on SLES11

SLES11 includes 2 programs, rpcbind and portmap which both provide portmapper functionality. SLES11 contains rpcbind-0.1.6+git20080930-6.15.x86_64.rpm portmap-6.0+git20070716-31.16.x86_64.rpm packages which are supposed to provide portmapper functionality. But while using portmap for portmapper functionality mountd fails to start.

root@sles11sp1-XXX:~# rpm -qa | grep portmap
portmap-6.0+git20070716-31.16

root@sles11sp1-XXX:~ # cat /etc/SuSE-release
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86_64)
VERSION = 11
PATCHLEVEL = 1

When you start you might see an error, that mound failed to start. If you look at /var/log/messages, you could be seeing

May 20 05:15:18 sles11sp1-XXX mountd[5703]: unable to register (mountd, 1, udp).
May 20 05:15:53 sles11sp1-XXX mountd[5711]: unable to register (mountd, 1, udp).
May 20 05:15:55 sles11sp1-XXX mountd[5713]: unable to register (mountd, 1, udp).

This is because mountd expects to work with rpcbind in SLES11SP1, mountd sees a service on port 111, but cannot register with portmap. It can only register with rpcbind service.

root@sles11sp1-XXX:~ # rpm -qa | grep rpcbind
rpcbind-0.1.6+git20080930-6.15
root@sles11sp1-XXX:~ # rpm -qa | grep portmap
root@sles11sp1-XXX:~ #

Once you remove portmap and install rpcbind, you should be able to start mountd and nfs using /etc/init.d/nfsserver start