FAI and portmapper problems

[Alexander Bugl]

Hi,

I am currently experimenting with FAI for sarge. Since (approx.) last
week I ran into problems when installing specific packages:

Every time a package postinst tries to add a user or a group, there
comes the error message
"rpcinfo: can't contact portmapper: RPC: Remote system error -
Connection timed out"

It looks like the portmapper on the installation client is not running
as it should -- when using addgroup, there is a process
"/usr/bin/rpcinfo -p", and this one seems to hang.

If I try to restart the portmapper with /etc/init.d/portmap (re)start,
this does not seem to work as it should should -- the portmapper is not
running.

If I run strace on portmap manually, the last two lines are:
clone(child_stack=0,
  flags=CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID|CLONE_CHILD_SETTID|SIGCHLD,
  child_tidptr=0x40038908) = 13936
exit_group(0)                           = ?

Anyone experiencing the same problem? Any known bugs, of which I am not
aware? Any workarounds? (The installation hangs for some minutes every
time addgroup or adduser is invoked, but continues ...) Other hints,
suggestions?

Best regards, Alex

P.S.: The installation server, it's NFS root, and my package mirror seem
to be up to date, I upgraded last week to FAI 2.8.2, and today to 2.8.3.
The problem occurred first last week, but I do not know if it related to
a new version of the portmap or fai or any other package ...

-- 
Alexander Bugl,  Central IT Services, ZMAW
Max  Planck  Institute   for   Meteorology
Bundesstrasse 53, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany
tel +49-40-41173-351, fax -298, room PE042