I always make an effort to spell out that I don’t call myself an “expert” when it comes to NetWorker. Every time I did that when I was “growing up” with the product, I’d subsequently make an arse* of myself.
So these days I just put “expert” on CVs and resumés for HR people, but consider myself generally speaking to be a long term user who happens to have a lot of technical understanding of the product.
Nevertheless, I’m always surprised, delighted and sometimes a little embarrassed when I discover a feature I’ve been using for ages is more powerful and useful than what I’ve been using it for.
Take the humble rpcinfo utility. I know, not really a NetWorker component, but one that’s used so often in NetWorker debugging that I often tend to think of it as “NetWorker utility”.
The traditional use for rpcinfo, the one that I’ve been using for the last 12+ years, is the most simple:
$ rpcinfo -p nox program vers proto port 100000 2 tcp 111 portmapper 100000 2 udp 111 portmapper 100024 1 udp 723 status 100024 1 tcp 726 status 390402 1 tcp 9001 390436 1 tcp 8772 390435 1 tcp 8176 390113 1 tcp 7937 nsrexecd 390115 1 tcp 8525 390103 2 tcp 8456 nsrd 390109 2 tcp 8456 nsrstat 390110 1 tcp 8456 nsrjbd 390120 1 tcp 8456 390109 2 udp 8179 nsrstat 390107 5 tcp 9754 nsrmmdbd 390107 6 tcp 9754 nsrmmdbd 390105 5 tcp 9248 nsrindexd 390105 6 tcp 9248 nsrindexd 390433 1 tcp 8980 nsrjobd 390104 105 tcp 9142 nsrmmd 390104 205 tcp 9561 nsrmmd 390104 305 tcp 9932 nsrmmd 390104 405 tcp 8303 nsrmmd 390104 505 tcp 9074 nsrmmd 390104 605 tcp 9093 nsrmmd 390104 705 tcp 8489 nsrmmd 390104 805 tcp 9260 nsrmmd 390104 905 tcp 9279 nsrmmd 390104 1005 tcp 9934 nsrmmd 390104 1105 tcp 8225 nsrmmd 390430 1 tcp 9047 nsrmmgd 390429 101 tcp 8301 nsrlcpd 390104 1205 tcp 8155 nsrmmd 390104 1305 tcp 8526 nsrmmd
However, recently a PSE got me to run a slightly different rpcinfo command, and I can immediately appreciate that it’ll be one I’ll periodically use again. That’s to make use of the test function, which actually does a connectivity test to the specified program number and report whether a response is received. It works like this:
# rpcinfo -t host number [version]
So, where is this useful? It’s another good way of checking not to see whether the NetWorker client is running, but to see whether it’s actually capable of responding. For example:
# rpcinfo -t nox 390113
program 390113 version 1 ready and waiting
As you can see, that’s a useful bit of information to get back during debugging connectivity and communications problems! Proving once gain – you can teach an old dog new tricks.
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* Or ass, if you must.
