[SOLVED]
It does not "listen" but after an upgrade to 2.9.3 (via Rawhide rpmfind) and an install of python-jsonrpclib.noarch => the JSON-RPC v2.0 client library for Python; and the PyQt4-webkit.x86_64 0:4.10.1-2.el7 => which installed 31 dependencies => and the python2-pip-8.1.2-5.el7.noarch.rpm it works.
electrum addrequest .14 -m "this is a test" returns
{
"URI": "
bitcoin:1GHHojoC4Ai1SPMN3YoNzemLNaaj2XFHKc?amount=0.14&r=https://electrum.org//r/req/6/a/6a32d881c0/6a32d881c0",
"address": "1GHHojoC4Ai1SPMN3YoNzemLNaaj2XFHKc",
"amount": 14000000,
"amount (BTC)": "0.14",
"exp": null,
"id": "6a32d881c0",
"index_url": "
https://electrum.org//r/index.html?id=6a32d881c0",
"memo": "this is a test",
"request_url": "
https://electrum.org//r/req/6/a/6a32d881c0/6a32d881c0",
"status": "Pending",
"time": 1502814157,
"websocket_port": 9999,
"websocket_server": "localhost"
showing the websocket port and server name above last two lines
and a curl call works under JSONRPC yielding as example below
curl --data-binary '{"id":"curltext","method":"getbalance","params":[]}'
http://0.0.0.0:7777{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "result": {"confirmed": "0"}, "id": "curltext"}[root@main ~]#
BUT . . . neither port shows in rpcinfo or netstat