if you're getting your kits/fab support through mosis then try asking on their message board: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MOSIS_Users_Group/

i've seen notices in my output log such as

   `sa1' is not specified. `sa' is used.
   `sb1' is not specified. `sb' is used.
   
but never thougth much of them. im working with ibm cmos8rf-dm 130nm kit btw

What version of the kit are you using? Every time the admin updates the kit, the user has to do some changes to his/her .cdsinit, .cdsenv, .simrc, display.drf (or overwrite local copies with the ones in /<version>/IBM_PDK/cmrf8sf/<subversion>/cdslib/examples/). These files refer to full paths, even if you create the rel symbolic link. What I did is edit the files to point to rel so that I don't have to overwrite them everytime. If cadence is looking for files in different releases of the kit that might screw things up, so make sure everything is pointing to the latest version of your kit. Not sure if this will solve your problem, but its worth a shot.