wotaskd trouble on panther

I recently installed Panther Server 10.3.5 on a G4 XServe. I can't
get wotaskd to run. WebObjects runs fine on my 10.2 server and 10.3
client installations. The omnigroups search engine seems to ignore
number parameters (grrr...) so it has been hard to find information
specific to 10.3 or port 1085.

I have tried using the startup script provided by Apple and the one
from the Applications Server Update 2.0 notes
(http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107909). I've tried
re-owning files to root (and appserver, and appserverusr...), but
permissions don't seem to be the problem. Monitor comes up just
fine, but when I try to add my host I get a big red "Failed to
contact <hostname>-1085" message. I get this message if I enter the
hostname, its IP, localhost or 127.0.0.1.

Trying to access http://localhost:1085 directly returns nothing.

I've tried directly starting
/System/Library/WebObjects/JavaApplications/wotaskd.woa/wotaskd as
root but that doesn't make a difference. Changing the port does not
help either. wotaskd starts and tells me it's waiting for requests,
but visiting http://<hostname>/cgi-bin/WebObjects/wotaskd.woa/-1085
just tells me "The requested application was not found on this server."

WebObjects appears to be attached to this port:

$ sudo lsof -i :1085
COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE     DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
java    3246 root    5u  IPv6 0x02e76880      0t0  TCP *:webobjects
java    3246 root    7u  IPv6 0x02a86ee0      0t0  UDP *:webobjects

but not responding to requests on it -- shouldn't it read "...TCP
*:webobjects (LISTEN)"? Note the "localhost:1085 didn't respond" in
the log from /tmp/WebObjects.log below, even though it thinks
initialization succeeds:

Info: ac_init(): reading configuration from: http://localhost:1085
Info: Caching hostent for localhost
Info: Added new config server localhost:1085.
Debug: init_adaptor(): ac_init succeeded
Debug: init_adaptor(): transaction_init() succeeded
Info: Reading configuration from
http://localhost:1085/WebObjects/wotaskd.woa/wa/woconfig
Info: attempting to connect to localhost on port 1085
Info: Preparing to read config for host: localhost
Debug: nonBlockingRecv(): recv() returned 0 (connection closed)
Info: Config server localhost:1085 didn't respond.
Info: WebObjects_init(): WebObjects adaptor initialization succeeded.

If anybody has had similar experiences, or has some guidance, I'd be
grateful.

Thanks,

zak.