On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:25:20 +0100, Brian Candler <B.Candler / pobox.com> wrote:
> the client side machine will read its own system
> hostname (as shown by 'hostname' on many Unix systems), and pass that across
> to the server. At the time it wishes to connect back, the server will then
> try to resolve that name back to an IP address.
> So it's important that 'hostname' contains a real hostname and your DNS is
> working, or at least at the server side you have an entry in /etc/hosts for
> the client host.



Oh... my.... god.

THIS JUST SOLVED EVERYTHING!

15 hours of poring over every line of drb.rb, recompiling kernels,
physically disabling firewalls, downloading new CVS-stable Ruby, and
dozens and dozens of "hello world" tests, and it was the fucking
/etc/hosts file!  We have dozens of machines that address eachother by
IP address, and had never needed to put each one's full hostname into
everyone's /etc/hosts ... until now.

Brian thanks so so so much.