April 21, 2006

Fixing ypserv startup failure on FC4

I noticed that on one of my Fedora Core 4 machines that has dual interfaces (onto separate subnets, but not acting as a router) that the ypserv daemon was not starting.  The logs contained messages of the form:

ypserv: unable to register (YPPROG, YPVERS, tcp)
connect from 127.0.0.1 to set(ypserv): request from unprivileged port

Here's how I fixed it:

I simply moved the priority of the startup script so that ypserv was launched rather later when entering the runlevel.

1. Edit /etc/init.d/ypserv to change
     # chkconfig: - 26 74
to be:
     # chkconfig: - 81 74
(I pulled the 81 number out of my hat - I just wanted something that would come late when entering the runlevel.)

2. Then re-establish the startup symlinks::
     cd /etc/init.d
     chkconfig --del ypserv
     chkconfig --add ypserv
     chkconfig ypserv on

Grumble, grumble.  I have wasted too many hours on yp/NIS!  Hopefully this helps a few folks out there on the net.

Posted by karl at April 21, 2006 1:44 AM