If your mediad is dying with the message "mediad: Initialization of my
  address failed.  Cannot contact objectserver." to the syslog, your
  machine may not be able to get its IP address.  Try adding the line

      hostresorder local bind

  or (if you use NIS)

      hostresorder local nis bind

  to your /etc/resolv.conf file.  Make sure the local machine's hostname
  and IP address are in the local /etc/hosts file, and then either
  restart the objectserver, mediad, and desktop or reboot.

  This problem manifests itself when the objectserver cannot grab the
  local machine's IP address from DNS (aka bind).  When the resolver is
  told to look at the /etc/hosts file first, it should find the local
  machine's address without asking DNS about it.

  Thanks to Dave Olson and Alexis Cousein (both of SGI) for tracking
  this down.