Bind 9 and RNDC

[Nicholas Berry]

I have compiled and installed Bind 9 on my Red Hat 6.1 box, running kernel
2.2.17.  The only zone that I have in the named.conf is the reversing zone
for 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa.

I have looked over the documentation
http://www.nominum.com/resources/Bv9ARM-091200.pdf regarding how to
configure rndc, but am having no luck.

I created the file /etc/rndc.conf with:
key rndc_key {
        algorithm "hmac-md5";
        secret "xxxxxxxxxxxxx";
};
options {
        default-server  127.0.0.1;
        default-key     rndc_key;
};

I do not have any access lists defined in named.conf, but I continue to get
a "connection refused" when attempting to connect.  I have tried using the
various flags (-s, -p, -y) when issuing rndc reload, but continue to get
connection refused (and if it's any consolation, I have done a port scan on
my system and port 953 is not showing as an open port).

Any ideas?

Thanks.
-Nicholas Berry