client talks to bbd@127.0.0.1:1984 ?!

hi, there, I have both client & server of 4.2-RC-20060712 on Redhat Linux 9. Other RHL9 clients work fine. One, mysteriously, failed to start. hobbitclient.logshows it tries to bond with 127.0.0.1:1984, as fails miserably. As in other clients, I define the bb server's IP address in /etc/default/hobbit-client. -x execution of the init script seems it did source the /etc/default/hobbit-client and got the correct bb server IP address. Any idea ? This RH9 boxen doesn't have bind-util package installed, that's the only difference I can think of.