FAI and portmapper problems

[Michael Tautschnig]

[...]
> 
> I investigated a little bit more: My observation was that the
> installations hangs every time a user or group is added. This is done
> through the scripts /usr/sbin/adduser and /usr/sbin/addgroup from Debian.
> Both are written in Perl and include
> /usr/share/perl5/Debian/AdduserCommon.pm, in which you can find the
> lines ($nisconfig is true, as the package nis has been installed):
> 
> if(defined($nisconfig) && -f "/var/yp/Makefile" &&
>    -x "/usr/bin/rpcinfo" && grep(/ypserv/, qx{/usr/bin/rpcinfo -p}))
> 
> The last call should be the one I can see in the process list:
> 11434 tty1     S+     0:00 /bin/sh -e /var/lib/dpkg/info/ssh.postinst configure
> 11470 tty1     S+     0:00 adduser
> 11474 tty1     S+     0:00 /usr/bin/rpcinfo -p
> 
I just had a look add rpcinfo's manpage:

 -p      Probe the portmapper on host, and print a list of all registered RPC
 programs.  If host is not specified, it defaults to the value returned by
 hostname(1).

Does
  - "hostname" work and
  - resolve to the correct hostname or an IP address that is effectively
    assigned to the client?

> If I run rpcinfo -p on the install client, there is no answer, too, it
> hangs.
> 
[...]
> 
> > - Could you test an installation using the example-configuration (simple)
> >   provided with FAI?
> 
> I will (have to) try something like this if I do find no other solution,
> as the installation needs with the hanging portmapper more than 2 hours
> (instead of under 15 min before). But my setup is based on the simple
> example, I just added some things.
> 
I assume, the test is useless - the example doesn't use NIS....

> > PS.: Judging from your output of strace, portmap starts up fine - it just forks ...
> 
> But there seem to be some problems with the portmapper: If I kill every
> instance and try to restart it, it won't run:
> :~# ps ax |grep portmap
> 11531 pts/0    R+     0:00 grep portmap
> :~# /etc/init.d/portmap start
> Starting portmap daemon: portmap.
> :~# ps ax |grep portmap
> 13861 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep portmap
> 
Did you start it within the chroot (/tmp/target, by default)? 

[...]

Regards,
Michael