Copyright (c) 1987 Sun Microsystems
Copyright (c) 1990 The Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.

%sccs.include.redist.man%

@(#)portmap.8 5.2 (Berkeley) 09/27/90

C 6 portmap - DARPA port to RPC program number mapper portmap [ -d ] "portmap command" "" "\fLportmap \(em DARPA to RPC mapper" DARPA "to RPC mapper \(em \fLportmap" Portmap is a server that converts RPC program numbers into DARPA protocol port numbers. It must be running in order to make RPC calls.

When an RPC server is started, it will tell portmap what port number it is listening to, and what RPC program numbers it is prepared to serve. When a client wishes to make an RPC call to a given program number, it will first contact portmap on the server machine to determine the port number where RPC packets should be sent.

Portmap must be started before any RPC servers are invoked.

Normally portmap forks and dissociates itself from the terminal like any other daemon. Portmap then logs errors using syslog (3). The -d (debug) option prevents portmap from running as a daemon, and causes errors and debugging information to be printed to the standard error output.

inetd.conf(5), rpcinfo(8), inetd(8) If portmap crashes, all servers must be restarted.