NFS HOWTO : Setting up a NFS server : The portmapper
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3.3. The portmapper

The portmapper on FreeBSD is called portmap. The man page on my system says it is a "DARPA port to RPC program number mapper". It is the first security hole you'll open reading this HOWTO. Description of how to close one of the holes is in the security section. Which I, again, urge you to read.

Start the portmapper. It's either called portmap or rpc.portmap and it should live in the /usr/sbin directory (on some machines it's called rpcbind). You can start it by hand now, but it will need to be started every time you boot your machine so you need to make/edit the rc scripts. Your rc scripts are explained more closely in the init man page, they usually reside in /etc/rc.d, /etc/init.d or /etc/rc.d/init.d. If there is a script called something like inet it's probably the right script to edit. But, what to write or do is outside the scope of this HOWTO. Start portmap, and check that it lives by running ps aux. It does? Good.


NFS HOWTO : Setting up a NFS server : The portmapper
Previous: First step
Next: Mountd and nfsd