Comment 6 for bug 455045

You wrote:

> I have used update-rc.d to add both that service and portmap, and sysv-rc-conf reports both services at 2,3,4 and 5.

The portmap service is no longer started via sysv-rc in Ubuntu 9.10, a symlink is provided as /etc/init.d/portmap for compatibility only. So adding it to the runlevels should be unnecessary, but I acknowledge that there's a race condition here that would permit nfs-kernel-server to start up before portmap. However, in my testing, once portmap comes up nfs-kernel-server seems to continue starting successfully. Is this not your experience?

Did adding start symlinks for portmap to your runlevels fix the boot problem for you? You only mention that running 'service portmap start' manually works.

When the boot breaks for you in this fashion, what does 'sudo status portmap' report? Even though there is a race condition, it seems quite unusual that you would manage to hit it consistently, so I suspect something else is breaking the portmap start.