Temporary failure in name resolution

Within my rails application, I make exactly one connection to a drb
server,
using following code:

def connect_to_drb
DRb.start_service #line no 29 of program
begin
@drb_con = DRbObject.new(nil, ‘druby://’+@drb_ip.strip)
@con_type = ‘drb’
return @drb_con
rescue
@drb_con = nil
return nil
end
end

And strangely it gives me following error sometime.I stress, only
sometimes.
I guess, I don’t need to do “DRb.start_service” to connect to drb
server.But
still, I would like to know the reason.

I am on Ubuntu dapper server edition.running ruby 1.8.4 and using
mongrel +
apache2.2 mod_proxy_balancer

SocketError (getaddrinfo: Temporary failure in name resolution):
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:837:in getaddrinfo' /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:837:inopen_server_inaddr_any’
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:860:in open_server' /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:756:inopen_server’
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:754:in open_server' /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1336:ininitialize’
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1624:in start_service' /lib/connection_class.rb:29:inconnect_to_drb’
/lib/connection_class.rb:92:in get_data_from_drb' /lib/connection_class.rb:85:inget_data’
/app/controllers/price_controller.rb:49:in `popupchart’

Also, as a follow up,

I can very well, do “DRb.start_service” from command prompt.