Sorry to answer my own mail ... but 1.2.1 stores its configuration in ~/.lyx/preferences not in ~/.lyx/lyxrc as earlier versions did. (There is mow a GUI interface Edit->Preferences to set values in this file). The Client.pm file has not be altered in sympathy with this change.
To get the lyxserver working again, I had to put the \serverpipe "/home/myname/.lyxpipe" into file: lyxrc and everything worked as of yore. I did try a quick fix of altering the lyxrc subroutine in Client.pm but that did not work. I must have overlooked something. John O'Gorman