Thank you Christoph and Simon!

> >Has anyone got any hints to give me about the following:
> 
> >rdist: connection failed: version numbers don't match
> 
> >From the man page:
> 
>      A complaint about mismatch  of  rdist  version  numbers  may
>      really  stem from some problem with starting your shell, for
>      example, you are in too many groups.
> 
> Or you have commands in your .cshrc that produce output, I'd guess.

The friendly hello in /etc/csh.cshrc reads:

TERM: Undefined variable.

Cheers,

Patrick