I have emacs 22.3 installed on

$ uname -a
Linux void 2.6.9-67.0.1.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri Nov 30 11:57:43 EST 2007 x86_64
x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

No emacs is running:

$ ps -e | grep emacs
$

If I invoke emacsclient at this point it does launch emacs but with an
unnecessary message on stderr and does not return (as expected since
--no-wait was not used):

$ echo $ALTERNATE_EDITOR
/sandbox/bin/emacs
$ emacsclient foo
emacsclient: connect: Connection refused

The newly launched emacs has a buffer open on foo but not as a server
buffer.

emacsclient is waiting for a done message from emacs and emacs is acting as
though it was launched by emacsclient using the --no-wait option.

Thanks.