Re: sockfs - a filesystem for reserved port permissions

Taner Halicioglu (taner@isi.net)
Thu, 18 Sep 1997 11:39:06 -0700 (PDT)


On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, Darren Reed wrote:

> In some mail I received from Malcolm Beattie, sie wrote
> >
> > Surely anonymous sockets shouldn't get bound to port numbers less
> > than 1024 (i.e. PROT_SOCK)? The kernel patch I made was a bit wrong
>
> Why not make "1024" configurable ? >:-) But in addition, to defining
> anonymous range, I'm suggesting also defining the "root-only" range
> with a similar variable.

Well, an interesting example of 'random ports' that get bound to a port #
below 1024, is ssh. ssh starts at 1023, and works DOWN... rather
interesting, if you ask me.

I was rather perplexed as to why, but I can only guess it's to avoid any
possibilities of another non-root program trying to bind at the same time?

-Taner

--
      D. Taner Halicioglu                     taner@isi.net
       Network Engineer                     ISI / GlobalCenter
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