Actually, I'm going to reopen this bug against portmap. :) The portmap upstart conversion introduced a dependency on the loopback interface that wasn't there before; previously portmap would start fine as long as /any/ network interface was up. And I think some systems, such as vserver, explicitly don't have lo available as an interface within the container. So even though it doesn't seem sensible to have a system without localhost, we want portmap to be as robust as possible here.
Actually, I'm going to reopen this bug against portmap. :) The portmap upstart conversion introduced a dependency on the loopback interface that wasn't there before; previously portmap would start fine as long as /any/ network interface was up. And I think some systems, such as vserver, explicitly don't have lo available as an interface within the container. So even though it doesn't seem sensible to have a system without localhost, we want portmap to be as robust as possible here.