Summary: calendar/cron/portmapper

From: Daryl Crandall (daryl@dash.mitre.org)
Date: Fri Jun 29 1990 - 13:19:25 CDT


Here is my summary of the responses to my query about calendar/cron being
unable to contact portmapper.

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ORIGINAL POSTING:

I've been getting the following message mailed to me by 'cron' for months now
 but have ignored it. I started using 'calendar' recently and realized that
I wasn't getting my calendar events sent to me. Anybody have any ideas what
causes this or how to fix it.

        Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 00:03:09 EDT
        From: root (Operator)
        To: root
        Subject: Output from "cron" command

        Your "cron" job

        calendar -

        produced the following output:

        rpcinfo: can't contact portmapper: rpcinfo: RPC: Timed out

        Daryl Crandall
        The MITRE Corporation
        daryl@mitre.org
        (703) 883-7278

#######################################################################
SUMMARY:

 In certain circumstances, the portmapper may detect an
 error and exit without notification. All software which
 uses the portmapper will subsequently fail.

 Fix description:

 A new portmapper is available which corrects the error
 condition without exiting. Any other errors are now
 logged to /var/adm/messages.

 Bug Id: 1025560
 Release summary: 4.0.3
 Fixed in releases: 4.1

The fixed portmap is available for ftp on titan.rice.edu.

###########################################################################

There is a bug in 4.0.3 that causes the portmapper to die; see attached.
It includes the Sun bug number; a fixed version of the portmapper is
available from Sun. (Which I thought we'd installed on our server, so
that guy should have the new version; I'll have to check - the new
version definitely gets shipped with the SunOS that runs on our machine.)

Restarting it might be a bit of a headache, since the restarted
portmapper won't have any RPC programs registered. You would probably
have to kill off "inetd" and restart it, along with any RPC servers
currently running on your machine, after restarting the portmapper, in
order to get those services re-registered.

###########################################################################

One thing to check is that it (calendar) has to be run on the server where
your home directory actually is. It won't work on a client.
Another is that the file it looks for in your home directory
is "calendar" not ".calendar".

Those are the two things that got me when we went to either 4.0
or 4.0.3 when it changed.

#############################################################################
I noticed a similar thing happening on one, just one, of my systems.
It turned out the portmapper on that system wasn't running.

#############################################################################

I don't know how your systems are set up, but calendar looks in your
home directory for a calendar file so it should only be run on the
system containing your home directory (typically a server) not the
clients which connect to that server. Could that be the problem?

#############################################################################

THANKS TO:
Jayashree Ramanathan jaya@cpswh.cps.msu.edu
Brian Glendenning brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca
RICK DIPPER, rick@uk.ac.man.mb.wiau
denise
George McBlane micrion!gmcblane@think.com
Alain Brossard brossard@litsun.epfl.ch
Peter Baer Galvin pbg@cs.brown.edu

#########################################################################
#########################################################################
NIELE:

Curiosity. Does any one know the origin or namesake of the name "Niele"
I believe it has something to do with Hawaiian mythology or royalty.
We have a machine named niele but the original user has moved on.

        Daryl Crandall
        The MITRE Corporation
        daryl@mitre.org
        (703) 883-7278



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