low ports only accessible with root access

[Antediluvia]

How can we install a program that needs to listen to ports below 1023, if those programs need to be started with root access in order to access those ports? I installed my program in /etc/rc.d, but since I did the installing the script runs with my user id and consequently doesn't seem to have access to lower ports. Only apache can access port 80 since httpd came preinstalled as root.

[jalal]

As you note, to access port numbers below 1023, you will need root access, and you don't have that.

What are you trying to do?

[Antediluvia]

I'm trying to install a custom server, and I don't want a port number to be part of the url. I can understand westhost not wanting us to be root, but accessing the basic ports is a real dealbreaker for hosting service. Its not "virtual root" at all if we can't even install a server. If there is no way around this then I wont have a choice but to find another host.

[Jonnyb0y]

Actually, you shouldn't have any problems at all binding to 'privledged' ports. If you go to http://strangeantics.com:81/ I just setup Apache2 to run on port 81 ;). No fancy work-- just told it to and it did. I can't promise I'll have it running on port 81 long because I usually keep it on 8080 though.