rpcinfo can't contact portmapper

[Tim Holy]

Using Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic), an upgrade from Jaunty. After the upgrade, I'm getting a number of weird networking problems (though basic webbrowsing & email work fine):
1. I can't mount an NFS partition, one that has worked on this laptop with every previous version of Kubuntu, and one that still works on other computers. If I do
$ sudo mount /usr/lab
I get
mount.nfs: rpc.statd is not running but is required for remote locking.
mount.nfs: Either use '-o nolock' to keep locks local, or start statd.

So then I do this:
$ sudo start statd
and get this:
statd start/running, process 18709

Then this happens again:
$ sudo mount /usr/lab
mount.nfs: rpc.statd is not running but is required for remote locking.
mount.nfs: Either use '-o nolock' to keep locks local, or start statd.:

but
$ sudo start statd
start: Job is already running: statd

so then I do this:
$ rpcinfo -p
and it hangs for something pretty close to 3 minutes and then says this:
rpcinfo: can't contact portmapper: RPC: Remote system error - Connection timed out

See also this:
$ ps ax | grep port
18017 ? Ss 0:00 portmap
18878 pts/27 R+ 0:00 grep port

2. Whenever I try to print something from okular, the window freezes for about 3 minutes and then the print dialog comes up. The printers I want (network printers) are not shown in the list.

3. My department uses Retrospect (commercial closed-source software) for backups, and I haven't been backed up since I upgraded. The problem, again, is that when I try to start the backup client it hangs for about 3 minutes but then fails to come up.

So it smells like some pervasive networking problem. But I don't really know where to start. I'd be happy to provide more information, if I knew what to provide.

Thanks very much in advance for your help!

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

I have found the problem: I had switched to wicd for managing my wireless (I was using a hidden SSID and have not had luck with network manager). wicd wasn't configuring the loopback (lo) interface. I switched back to NM, which does configure lo, and all seems well (well, I haven't tested Retrospect, but the others are OK).

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

I should also add: because in my testing I was alternating among the "old fashioned" /etc/network/interfaces, network manager, and wicd, I had turned off the "old fashioned" style by simply deleting /etc/network/interfaces. Network manager still configures lo properly in that case, but seemingly wicd does not. It seems one must have this line:

auto lo iface lo inet loopback

in the /etc/network/interfaces as described here: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6527/1/.