docbook5, getting started

hi, I must be doing something wrong since I can't get to the first
step of creating a DocBook5.0 raw bibliography.
I converted my bibtex database to ris format and I can use refdba, so
my installation is okay I think.

In my docbook test.xml file I have a couple of citations like this:
<citation role="REFDB">kuma_v92</citation>.

runbib -d mybib -r -t db50x test.xml
I get
Variable $SGML_CATALOG_FILES not set
Parse error at line 4 column 2:
syntax error

The terminal where the refdbd instance is running (refdbd -s -e 0 -l
7) says this when I exec the runbib in another terminal:
---------------------
sqlite3
/usr/local/var/lib/refdb/db

mybib
SELECT meta_app,meta_type,meta_dbversion FROM t_meta WHERE meta_type='risx'
connected to database server using database:
mybib
no character encoding conversion required
output encoding is:
UTF-8
XML parse error

child exited with code 1
server waiting n_max_fd=4
---------------------


So I try the step-by-step way:
xsltproc --xinclude /usr/local/share/refdb/xsl/citationsraw.xsl
test.xml > test.id.xml
This produces a text version of the test.xml file, except it still has
citations tags but no attributes on the tags.

So xmllint doesn't like it:
xmllint --noout --nonet --dtdvalid
file:///usr/local/share/refdb/dtd/citationlistx.dtd test.id.xml
test.id.xml:4: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found

Does any of that ring a bell? Have I missed a step somewhere?

thanks,
--Tim

p.s., in refdbc i can successfully get a reference from the database:
getref -d mybib :CK:=kuma_v92

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