PORTMAP(8)

NAME
portmap - RPC program,version to DARPA port mapper

SYNOPSIS
portmap [-d] [-v] [-h bindip]

DESCRIPTION
Portmap is a server that converts RPC program numbers into DARPA protocol port numbers. It must be running in order to make RPC calls.

When an RPC server is started, it will tell portmap what port number it is listening to, and what RPC program numbers it is prepared to serve. When a client wishes to make an RPC call to a given program number, it will first contact portmap on the server machine to determine the port number where RPC packets should be sent.

Portmap must be started before any RPC servers are invoked.

Portmap uses hosts_access(5) access control by default. Access control patterns may only reference IP addresses.

Normally portmap forks and dissociates itself from the terminal like any other daemon. Portmap then logs errors using syslog(3).

The following options are available:

-d  Prevent portmap from running as a daemon, and causes errors and debugging information to be printed to the standard error output.

-v  Enable verbose logging of access control checks.

-h  Specify specific ip addresses to bind to for UDP requests. This option may be specified multiple times and is typically necessary when running portmap on a multi-homed host. If no -h option is specified, portmap will bind to INADDR_ANY, which could lead to problems on a multi-homed host due to portmap returning a udp packet from a different IP address then it was sent to. Note that when specifying ip addresses with -h, portmap will automatically add 127.0.0.1 to the list so you don't have to.

SEE ALSO
hosts_access(5), inetd.conf(5), inetd(8), rpcinfo(8)

BUGS
If portmap crashes, all servers must be restarted.

HISTORY
The portmap command appeared in 4.3BSD