[MPICH] DHCP assigned IP addresses and hostnames?

[Steve Kargl]

I've set up mpich2 on a colleagues duo-core opteron laptop
so that he can do some development before moving to the
cluster.  His laptop gets an IP address assigned by DHCP
and his hostname is not a fully qualified domain name.

I can tell him to update mpd.hosts with the current IP
address upon each reboot, but I haven't found a way to
get around this:

alien-mobile:fcurra[203] mpdboot
mpdboot_alien-mobile.apl.washington.edu (handle_mpd_output 388): from mpd on alien-mobile.apl.washington.edu, invalid port info:
mpd failed: gethostbyname_ex failed for alien-mobile.apl.washington.edu

Is there some way to tell MPICH2 to use localhost and the 127.0.0.1
address?

-- 
Steve