The "portmapper" rpcbind is a daemon that converts the RPC program numbers into general addresses (e.g. IP address and port number). It must be running on the server in order to send RPC requests to the server. Because RPCs are used for the NFS-specific network communication, the rpcbind daemon is prerequisite for the other daemons.
If a server program is started which communicates via RPC (such as the mountd daemon, for example), it informs the rpcbind daemon of the address at which it is "listening" and of which RPC program numbers it is capable of processing. If a client wishes to send an RPC request to a specified program number, it first contacts the rpcbind daemon on the server computer to determine the address to which it should send the RPC packets.
The rpcbind daemon is invoked automatically by an RC script when POSIX is started.
Authorization: The rpcbind daemon can only be started with root authorization.
Path: /usr/sbin
Syntax
rpcbind |