In my case (splunkforwarder-6.3.3-f44afce176d0-linux-2.6-x86_64.rpm), this error seems to have been caused by comments within inputs.conf:
[tcpout]
defaultGroup=Production
disabled=false
[tcpout:Production]
#server= 172.19.94.77:9997 # Model
server= 172.19.94.19:9997 # splunk-delphi.blah.com
Pruning all the comments and restarting splunkd seems to have fixed it. Bad parser?
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