I think then something is wrong with your inetd.conf
Or you haven't done as suggested and restarted inetd?
Alternatively, you could notify us whether you can access other network-services such as ftp, ssh, telnet, http , so we'll know there is no network problem

-alm-
I have restarted and killed inetd tons of times. i dont know what could be wrong with my inetd.conf file. i used mandrake 9.1 before and that pretty much set everything up for me. but this is very frustrating.

I am on the internet so i would think that it cant be a network problem

i can use ftp

You won't get any output from the command line, that is normal.

What you need to do is, run "ps -ef | grep swat | grep -v grep", and look for the swat program running. The open a browser and navigate to the localhost:901 page and then run the ps command above again and see if it is there.

If not, then there is a problem with inetd running the program or you have a firewall blocking that port. You may want to run iptables or ipchains to see what is set up on your system.

If it is running and you are getting nothing on your browser, then there is probably a problem with the swat program itself.

<edit>
after looking back, I believe the option you would have had to run would have been "--enable-swat", The "--with-swatdir" will default to a previously specified value. But you would have had to do the "--enable-swat" option in order to get this.

there is nothing when i type ps -ef | grep swat | grep -v grep

when i typed in iptables i have no idea what all that means because i am pretty new to all this.

i am pretty sufre that i dont have a firewall up

You could try and see if you can use any other inetd service. Did you try to ftp to your own machine (ftp localhost)? In case ftp is not an inetd service, try to telnet to your own machine. If that doesn't work, see if telnet is enabled in inetd.conf; and if it isn't, enabled it, restart inetd, and try to telnet again.
I hope this made sense.

when i tried telnet to my own machine it read this

telnet> open
(to) localhost
Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused

If you are getting a bunch of output from iptables, then you probably do have a firewall set up. I know redhat gives you an option during install that will ask you if you want a firewall set up, the default is medium security settings, which pretty much only allows outbound connections to occur.

the fact that you are being refused connection also leans this way.

as root run, "iptables -L", and then post results. X out any identifiable IP's (i.e. 192.168.0.1 becomes xxx.xxx.x.x or <my IP>)

I GOT IT!!!!!!!!

i went into the inetd.conf and relized that the #'s meant that the code was commented out. so i deleted the # next to the swat tcp/901 and restarted inetd and it worked. thanks a lot to everyone who helped me out. im sure i will have more questions along the way. thanks

no problem! congratulations!