Lack of portmap makes nfs mounts slow

[Dave Gilbert]

Neither ubuntu-desktop nor ubuntu-live depend on portmap, making NFS mounts dead slow out of the box.

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

 status Rejected

You don't need portmap to mount nfs shares.

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

Hmm - if I try to NFS mount our servers the mount hangs - if I install portmap and then start the mount it works.

So, if I don't need portmap why does it hang - either way I have a problem where I can't mount NFS shares with the livecd; my fix is to start portmap; perhaps the problem is something else?

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

On zo, 2006-07-02 at 12:47 +0000, Dave Gilbert wrote:
> Hmm - if I try to NFS mount our servers the mount hangs - if I install
> portmap and then start the mount it works.

mount -tnfs is dead-slow here too (several minutes of waiting),
depending on the paramters
--
Dennis K.

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

with portmap in, the mount -t nfs is instant like it should be

Perhaps I hadn't waited for the timeout (if it was several minutes
definitely); so it sounds like its trying to talk to portmap but eventually timing out.

Either way, an nfs mount shouldn't take minutes, so please unreject this bug - but feel free to change it to something like 'NFS mount takes ages on livecd' if that makes you happier.

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

Sounds reasonable :)

[Torbjørn Sund (torbjorn-sund)]

This bug has also been reported in bug 48366.

Portmap is definitely needed for nfs mounts - unless one considers 1m30s waits ok. It has nothing to do with the liveCD as such. The wait occurs also in Thunderbird when accessing nfs-mounted mail directories. Unless there is a good reason for not installing portmap I suggest to include it as default, or at least make the nfs client depend on it.

(The nfs mount program might also try and detect a missing portmap and issue a warning - would have saved me some hours of hunting for the error).

Affects also Edgy Eft Release candidate 20061019.

Toby

[Philip Paquette (pcpaquette)]

Setting package from (undefined) to portmap, so it gets out of the bug list without package.
Also, can you confirm this bug still applies in edgy/feisty?
Thanks

[Philip Paquette (pcpaquette)]

Leaving at confirmed. Hopefully a developer will look at it.

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

I can confirm it still occurs on feisty.
I've looked at what goes on with wireshark on 'lo'; something somewhere is doing a
portmap

  [Program Version: 2]
  [V2 Procedure: SET (1)]
  Program: NLM (100021)
  Version: 1
  Proto: TCP (6)
  Port: 38824

Which gave me an idea - it is locking related; adding -onolock makes the mount succeed in a few seconds.

I don't think I could argue for starting portmap by default - that would be insecure; but I think mount's behaviour without a local portmap should be more reasonable.

Dave

[Pete (pete123)]

Installing package nfs-common fixes it for me, I wonder if anyone else would confirm this?

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

I haven't tried this yet, but it looks to me like nfs-common has a dependency on portmap - so is that causing it to install and start portmap?
What happens if you install nfs-common but explicitly stop portmap?

Dave

[Pete (pete123)]

My bad. Killed the portmap process and tried to mount another nfs share, still seems to mount fine. I don't really know much about portmap, I'm probably missing something here.

[JohnFlux (johnflux)]

I also had the problem that nfs took ages.

Installing portmap works for me - after installing it now mounts instantly.

To test, if I do /etc/init.d/portmap stop then mounting takes ages again.

[Helge Willum Thingvad (helgesdk)]

Portmap isn't needed.
The problem is solved by using the '-o nolock' mount option.

However, I do agree it would be smart to recommend portmap in ubuntu-standard.