When a service has a maximum number of children configured in inetd.conf, I have found that, when the service exits due to a signal or with a non-zero exit status, that inetd will print to the syslog with something like:

inetd[15005]: /usr/libexec/telnetd[15008]: exited, status 1

If no maximum number of children is configured for a service, then this doesn't occur.

Fix: 

I looked at the source and found that se_maxchild is being checked in
addchild():

void
addchild(struct servtab *sep, pid_t pid)
{
       if (sep->se_maxchild <= 0)  <----
               return;
[...]
       sep->se_pids[sep->se_numchild++] = pid;
[...]

This is the only place that se_numchild gets incremented.  se_numchild
is used later on in logic in reapchild() to print out the above message.
If se_maxchild is 0 (never set in inetd.conf), then addchild() never
gets to increment se_numchild, and the logic in reapchild() is such that
the message never gets printed.

I think a simple change in reapchild() to not rely on se_maxchild when printing should solve this problem.
How-To-Repeat: Configure inetd.conf to have a finite maximum number of children for a service, and then execute and exit the service.