Prasanta Sadhukhan wrote:
> I tried /etc/rc.d/inetd start -> says "Starting inetd"
> but /etc/rc.d/inetd/status -> says "inetd is not running

Maybe it's turned of in rc.conf?  What does this say on your machine? 

$ grep inet /etc/rc.conf /etc/defaults/rc.conf
/etc/defaults/rc.conf:# inetd is used to [...]
/etc/defaults/rc.conf:inetd=YES         inetd_flags="-l"