inetd is referred to as the Internet Super-Server because it manages connections for several services. When a connection is received by inetd, it determines which program the connection is destined for, spawns the particular process and delegates the socket to it. First login as a root user.

FreeBSD version 5.0/6.0 or later

Newer version of FreeBSD has special start, stop, restart script, you can use this script restart inetd:

#/etc/rc.d/inetd restart

Old method (works on all variant of UNIX/Linux/BSD oses)
Once you made changes to inetd (internet super-server)configuration file (/etc/inetd.conf) you can use kill or killall command as follows to restart inetd:

# killall -HUP inetd

OR

# kill -HUP inetd

OR

# kill -HUP `cat /var/run/inetd.pid`

This causes the inetd program to restart and examine its configuration files. This is especially useful if you have changed the configuration settings.

See also:

• BSD start services article it explains rc.conf and other concepts related to bsd services.