inetd not being run at startup

[Ric Otte <ric@otte.ucsc.edu>]

I recently lost my hard drive, and after restoring, fetchmail does not
work.  I get the smtp failed for localhost message, and discovered
that exim is not running (I can't telnet to localhost 25).  Things
work fine if I start exim manually (/usr/sbin/exim -bd), or if I do
"/etc/init.d/inetd restart" or if I do "/usr/sbin/inetd".  So it looks
to me as if inetd is not being run at startup.  The relevant line in
my /etc/inetd.conf is:
smtp            stream  tcp     nowait  mail /usr/sbin/exim exim -bs 
Does anyone have any idea why inetd would not be run at startup?  
Thanks very much,

Ric