well, this is annoying.
i removed amavisd-new, rebooted, reinstalled it, only edited the “LocalSocket /var/spool/amavisd/clamd.sock” line of the /etc/amavisd/amavisd.conf file, and then restarted amavisd without an error. I just used “mail” and “mutt” to send out messages from the command line, and both of them went through. So not sure what the problem was, but it appears to be working now.
Thanks for the help. Until I get this set up with real DNS entries pointing to it, i can’t test it fully, but looks like it’s working.