xinetd readjusting service, huh?

[madsere]

One of our clients complained that pop didn't respond and when I checked the service it was down. I started it from the Plesk CP, no apparent problem.

Checking /var/log/messages I found a long list of errors like this:

Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: Starting reconfiguration
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd: xinetd -HUP succeeded
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: Swapping defaults
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service imap
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service pop3s
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service ftp
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service poppassd
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service smtp
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service smtps
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service imaps
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service pop3
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: Reconfigured: new=0 old=8 dropped=0 (services)
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: Starting reconfiguration
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd: xinetd -HUP succeeded
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: Swapping defaults
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service imap
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service pop3s
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service ftp
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service poppassd
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service smtp
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service smtps
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service imaps
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: readjusting service pop3
Dec 20 17:10:28 vps304 xinetd[20237]: Reconfigured: new=0 old=8 dropped=0 (services)

I only included two "rounds" here, on the server it was going on and on.

What exactly is the server doing when it is "readjusting service", and why?

 

[madsere]

PS. the "watchdog" was enabled but for some reason didn't restart the pop service.