sysctl.conf not running on boot

At what point is sysctl.conf supposed to be read during boot, and why might it not be running? I have the following settings which are not being applied when I reboot:

net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-filter-pppoe-tagged = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-filter-vlan-tagged = 0

fs.nfs.nlm_udpport = 32768
fs.nfs.nlm_tcpport = 32768

The first section is needed for KVM bridging, and the second is to run the NFS lock manager on a known port. However, after booting, these values have not taken effect. If I run sysctl -p, then they do.

This wouldn't be a huge issue, except that I can't figure out how to restart the lock manager without rebooting. I would really like to know why sysctl.conf isn't working at boot, but I'd settle for just being able to restart the lock manager.

This is on Ubuntu server 10.04.2, kernel 2.6.32-31-server. I know some daemons check the permissions on their config files and refuse to work if they're too permissive, but sysctl.conf is 644 root:root, which I'm pretty sure is the default.

Have a look at Some sysctl's are ignored on boot. In short, the settings are applied early, before some kernel modules are loaded.

On ubuntu, it will be loaded up as part of the upstart daemon running the /etc/init/procps.conf file.

Check that it's there, and that you haven't disabled it.