Starting with build v2.8008-459 of the client, there is now a single unified Linux binary (for each processor architecture type), instead of separate ones for each architecture and library combination. The name resolution incompatibilities have been worked around by using "clever" dynamic symbol loading techniques, but this didn't work very well (problems ranged from segfaults to hanging threads to simply not-working).

So, from v2.8011-463 on, the client does not even bother trying to work around the insanity introduced by glibc, and instead pipes/parses the output of 'host'. If you find that your Linux client is still reporting an error during connection attempts, it's probably because you do not have the bind tools installed on your computer. Look for a "bind-tools" binary package in whichever packaging format is appropriate for your particular flavor of linux.

More recently, starting in v2.9008-490 the Linux client is now statically compiled with ucLibc (instead of glibc) and no longer has any dependencies on the "host" utility. The only requirement is that your /etc/resolv.conf be properly configured with valid nameservers.

$ dnetc -a 145.89.128.249

If they change the ip address, or that server goes down, the client will fail. So I have the client running in a detached screen. And I check the output from time to time.

[Ed: This solution is not recommended.]

You can also setup dist.net to run offline, and setup a cron job to grab the IP of the keyserver and update the cache hourly. You may have to adjust the grep/sed expressions depending on your local flavor.

#!/bin/bash
# script to start, stop, restart, or update cache for the dist.net client
# is dist.net client on?
distnetON=$(ps --no-headers -o %c -C dnetc)

function start() {
  # run dist.net client offline
  /usr/local/dist.net/dnetc -quiet -runoffline
  echo "Started distributed.net client"
}

function stop() {
  /usr/local/dist.net/dnetc -quiet -shutdown
  echo "Stopped distributed.net client"
  sleep 2
}

function update() {
  # ping the keyserver, grab the ip from the output, and update the caches
  /usr/local/dist.net/dnetc -quiet -update -a $(ping -n -c 1 us.v29.distributed.net | grep \( | sed -e 's/^PI.\+\.net (//g' -e 's/) fro.\+$//g')
}

if [ -x /usr/local/dist.net/dnetc ]; then
  case "$1" in
  start|restart)
    # make sure that there are no clients running
    if [ "$distnetON" = "dnetc" ]; then stop; fi
    # now start it up
    start
    ;;
  stop)
    if [ "$distnetON" = "dnetc" ]; then stop; fi
    ;;
  update)
    if [ -e /var/smoothwall/red/active ]; then update; fi
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Syntax: $0 [start|restart|update|stop]"
    exit 1
    ;;
  esac
fi
exit 0

#!/bin/bash
# cron.hourly script to update the dist.net clients key server IP address

# if dist.net client not running, then start it
if [ "$(ps --no-headers -o %c -C dnetc)" != "dnetc" ]; then
        #/usr/local/dist.net/dist.net start;
        echo "not running"
fi

# check if red interface is connected
if [ -e /var/smoothwall/red/active ]; then
        # update in/out caches
        /usr/local/dist.net/dist.net update

        # write to smoothwall log
        logger -t smoothwall "dist.net: cache updated"
fi
exit 0

Just put the dist.net file in the directory where your dist.net client is, and adjust the paths, and it should work.