I've had this same issue.. except lots of services don't start. The global zone is fine, but new local zones (sparse) have no inetd services running. Sure enough, services file only has 2 lines in it. Pasting in a proper file fixes everything. I'm using Solaris 10, release 3 with the Recc & Security cluster from 11/2/07. services file on the global is fine, permissions and link are fine.
Thanks for suggesting looking at that file, it saved the day here! This message posted from opensolaris.org
