no its not that simple as executing the rc.inetd script.
at least it is not working.
just a few minutes earlier it was working fine. i did an nmap scan and found all the ports inetd had opened.
edited the /etc/inetd.conf file and commented out the lines related with time, finger, ftp, auth and comsat (those are all the ports that were opened).
did a killall -HUP inetd and then did an nmap scan again.
found that no ports are opened (good). now i installed hotwayd and added the line required for it to work in /etc/inetd.conf
tried starting inetd by executing ./rc.inetd -restart
it said that the daemon has been restarted but it does not show up in ps -ef or top.
neither does it open the port up. i tried executing the program directly by typing /usr/sbin/inetd but that didn't help either. i undo all the changes i made in /etc/inetd.conf and rebooted so that the server could be started at the time of boot. didn't help...
the weirdest part is that there is no error.
any ideas? thanx for reading the long post but i wanted to clear up everything that i did.

Why not post inet.conf here so we can take a look.

sorry for late reply. the problem is solved, it was a syntax error in inetd.conf.
thanx for reply.