i had rpc.statd open on port 111 on a relatively fresh install of debian squeeze. i did an apt-get purge portmap as i wanted to disable rpc services and close the open port on my box; i was presented with the following:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libtirpc1 rpcbind
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
libtirpc1 rpcbind
The following packages will be REMOVED:
nfs-common* portmap*
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libtirpc1 rpcbind
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 127 kB of archives.
After this operation, 438 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
long story short, i was able to remove portmap, without installing additional packages, by first doing apt-get purge nfs-common followed by apt-get purge portmap.
can anyone explain this behaviour? why would apt-get attempt to install rpcbind and libtirpc1 when attempting to purge portmap in the first case, but not the second? from the output above, it is clear that apt-get intended to remove nfs-common along with portmap to begin with. the only other relevant detail i was able to find is that fam depends on portmap, but this is a remote server and fam and a gui are not needed. is this a bug or am i missing something? if so, who should the report be directed towards?