I have a large number of xinetd-managed listeners on an FC3 box that start and listen properly, but new services (of the same type) with a port >= 10000 do not start. No errors of any type are logged; the upper numbered ports silently fail to start.

My question is two-fold:

1. Is there a quantitative limit to the number of listeners that xinetd can manage? If so, what is the maximum?

2. Is there anything special about the five-digit port (10000) vs. the four-digit ports (9999) that start properly?

The actual total number of listeners is less than 10,000, so it seems the issue may be centered around 2) above.

My xinetd is custom-compiled to handle a large number of file descriptors, and has been in service for over two years.

Ideas?