Hi,
in Ubuntu 10.04 (as far as I remember it happens in other releases too) monetdbd takes about 10 seconds to start as opposed to mac os x 10.6 and 10.7 in which it starts instantaneously. Inspecting connections.c, the delay is due to the call on gethostbyaddr(). Reading the respective man page, getting the hostname involves a number of steps ranging from looking at /etc/hosts.conf, /etc/hosts, as well as consulting named for resolving the ip address. What's more, the man page states explicitly that gethostbyaddr() is obsolete and suggests the use of getnameinfo() instead. Correspondingly, the man page in os x recommends the use of getnameinfo() as well, but without stating any explanation for this.
Have you investigated this issue? Do you know what causes such a delay? Is it present in other OSs too?
Thanks, Babis