RPC Performance question

[Scott Kamin]

We're trying to pin down a performance problem on a Sun 330 just installed
on a local campus network of about 1100 hosts. An application on the Sun,
which makes use of RPC calls, runs at normal speed when used by root, but
runs very slowly when used by any other user. The application ran fine
before the machine was put on the network.

The problem can be easily demonstrated by running rpcinfo -p. As root, the
portmap table is returned immediately. As anyone else, this command
produces no output for 5-8 seconds, then returns the correct table.

The 330 is not running routed, but has a default route installed which
points to the campus gateway machine. All 1100 hosts are listed in the
/etc/hosts file.

Does anyone have any ideas about the differences between root and non-root
RPC performance?

Scott J. Kamin		{ico, att!uswat} !onecom!sjk
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