I've had dns trouble too, that I never figured out.  This has been on
FreeBSD-3.3/i386, with sources compiled from recent CVS on the same
machine.
Basically, venus can't find the server, even though it's up and
pingable by name (not just ip address).   Putting the server's address
in /etc/hosts solved the problem, and I didn't dig in further.  So I
believe there is likely something wrong beyond the usual libc version
lossage that plagues Linux users.

On a semi-related note, it would be cool if venus stored the ip
address and root volume name in RVM, so that one didn't have to
hard-code the startup call for disconnected startup.  These could be
fetched again on venus start, using the old values in case of TMPFAIL/etc.
With the apparent dns bug fixed and this change, one would simply have
to run venus the first time when on the net, and thereafter all would
just work.

        Greg Troxel <gdt_at_ir.bbn.com>