Seeing "mount clntudp_create: RPC: Program not registered" when starting NFS on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

This was a classic Doh! moment.

I kept seeing: -

mount clntudp_create: RPC: Program not registered

when I was trying to check the status of my NFS exports: -

$ cat /etc/exports

/media/Software *(rw,no_root_squash)

using the command: -

$ showmount -e

It took me a few minutes to realise why.

NFS wasn't running, as evidenced by: -

$ chkconfig --list | grep -i nfs

nfs             0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
nfslock         0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

I set the service to start at boot-up ( whenever run levels 3, 4 or 5 are started ): -

$ chkconfig --levels 345 nfs on

and validated this: -

$ chkconfig --list | grep -i nfs

nfs             0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
nfslock         0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

and then started the service: -

$ service nfs start

Starting NFS services:                                     [  OK  ]
Starting NFS quotas:                                       [  OK  ]
Starting NFS daemon:                                       [  OK  ]
Starting NFS mountd:                                       [  OK  ]

Now I can see my exports: -

$ showmount -e

Export list for vhost4288:
/media/Software *