----- Original Message ----- 
> Yesterday I had a power outage and my server which lacks UPS went down
> (should buy one).  Anyway I booted the server again. My cron didn't start
> and neither my inetd. But I have no problem starting these services when
the
> server is up and running. My idea is that something in the boot process
has
> been corrupted but I haven't been able to figure out what it might be. Is
> there anyone who has a suggestion where I should look?
>

Hi,

Normally these are started from scripts within /etc/rc.d, like
/etc/rc.d/cron. This script expects that there is an entry in either
/etc/rc.conf or /etc/defaults/rc.conf, for cron for example 'cron=YES'. Both
mentioned services are per default in /etc/defaults/rc.conf, that might be
the first  place to look and see if either one of those has 'cron=YES' and
if /etc/rc.d/cron start works.
This is done by /etc/rc, which tries to start each file in /etc/rc.d, and is
the first thing the kernel starts executing once booted.

How did you start the services afterwards? e.g. Does /etc/rc.d/cron start
work?
A quick grep shows the following files involved in the process:
/etc/rc
/etc/rc.conf or /etc/defaults/rc.conf,
/etc/rc.d/<service>
/etc/rc.subr
(The service itself)

gr,
Axel