On Wed, 5 Apr 2006, Amalan, S wrote: > To: users@httpd.apache.org > From: "Amalan, S" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: RE: [EMAIL PROTECTED] RE: failure notice > > Thanks much. This explains why my installation did not need root > privileges - I was running it on port 1150 or so. > > This also brings up the question: is there a reason to set the port to > be below 1024 so that only root can start it up? Is there a downside to > running Apache on a port greater than 1024?
By convention port 80 is the accepted port for a web server like apache to connect to and listen on. Your browser will connect to port 80 by default, unless yout tell it to use another port. If you run apache on an obscure port, how will a user know which port to specify when connecting to your web server? Most users do not even know about ports - all they want to know is the URL of your website. AFAIK, You can run apache on any free port on your server, but if it is not port 80, you will then have to have your users to connect to it like this: http://www.your-server.net:1150/home-page.html Then every anchor in your site code would need to specify the port number. I guess it makes things alot simpler to use a standard port numbering scheme for all services that accept connections. For a list of standard ports and the services that you can expect to find listening on them, take a look at: http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers You can also do a port scan at http://www.grc.com Click on Shields Up, then do a full port scan. If you click on a port box, you will get more information from the grc port database about the service that runs on that particular port. > There must have been some reason for designing it in such a way that the > process owner gets dropped from root to a non-zero UID account. I guess > I am confused because if you need to be root to start it up, why should > the process owner be dropped after binding to the privileged port to a > non-zero UID account? And if you weren't root to begin with you wouldn't > be able to startup Apache anyway. Normally only root user is allowed to start or stop services such as web servers like apache. It would not do to have joe bloggs being able to start or stop services at will - this is a privilege reserved for the sys admin that logs in as the root user. HTH Keith Roberts --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] " from the digest: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
