Does anyone know how to tell portmap which ports to give out? I have now noticed a couple of times that some service fails after a reboot, and then it turns out that portmap has assigned a random portmapper to e.g. ypserv and that random number just happens to be the port another service needs. Like this morning: Jan 18 09:35:46 maas dovecot: Fatal: Jan 18 09:35:46 maas dovecot: listen(993) failed: Address already in use Jan 18 09:35:46 maas dovecot: dovecot startup failed so no IMAPS, so no dovecot, because ypserv was on that port. It has also happened that cups was the service failing to start up and maybe others. The workaround seems to be to find out which service is at the wrong port (e.g. ypserv), stop that service, then start the service that failed to start, and then start ypserv. But wouldn't it be much nicer if one could tell portmapper which ports are free for its use, and which it should leave alone? The portmap man- page and other documentation doesn't give much information. Or maybe it is not portmap which needs configuration but the services using portmap. Any help will be appreciated. David Jansen
