Help, please! telnet down, smtp not available, pam screwy

[kvaughan@bc.cc.ca.us]

My other letter doesn't seem to have made it through to the list, so I'm
posting a different version...

I did a recent reboot into my Sid box after the kids played a few Windoze
games, and found a few bizarre behaviors.

I cannot fetch mail from my server.  Typical message:

---
daddy:~# fetchmail
9 messages for daddy at 192.168.0.1 (28311 octets).
reading message daddy@192.168.0.1:1 of 9 (2946 octets) .fetchmail: SMTP
connect
to localhost failed
fetchmail: SMTP transaction error while fetching from 192.168.0.1
fetchmail: Query status=10 (SMTP)
---

I've Googled this and noted that exim has always been up and working. 
Fetchmail has too.  Things were working before I booted into Windoze then
back into Linux.

Exim's panic logfile shows "TCP service "smtp" not found"

I cannot telnet in/out of the box either: 

---
daddy:~# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

daddy:~# telnet localhost
telnet: could not resolve localhost/telnet: Servname not supported for
ai_socktype

(same from the server)
---

Last, but quite annoying, I get log messages about cron(pam_unix) going
every 15 minutes.  I didn't realize this was a normal job, but now knoww it
for sure with the messages and the persistent --MARK-- messages.

I'm getting very lost in all the information I've read about portmap, inetd,
and whatever conf files I've been able to pick up in between (eg. hosts* in
/etc).  I have no ipchains, etc. on this box as my server acts as the
firewall.  

Does anyone have ideas on what is wrong with this setup?  I keep up to date
in Sid... is a package screwed up (pam?) somewhere which would cause this
mess?

Thanks,

Kenward