[SunHELP] Running Oracle Forms in Port 80 other than root

[Nicholas Dronen]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 08:27:01AM -0800, Duncan, Rosemarie A (NITC) wrote:
> Assistance needed please.....
> I am running Oracle Forms Server on a Solaris 2.6 machine.  It is now in
> port 9000, but because of some DOD requirements, I have to now run the
> service on port 
> 80.  However, the only way I can do this is if I run the service as root.
> I have called in Oracle for this issue, but they advised me to also look for
> answers from the 
> UNIX community as to why root has taken exclusive use of port 80.  There are
> no other services that I can see in the machine that is using port 80.

This is by design.  Ports <= 1024 are reserved for root.  This is a fudgey
security mechanism whereby processes running on other machines sometimes
have a bit more "faith" in connections coming from a priviledged port
because they're owned by root on the originating machine.  I say it's
fudgey because that a connection was opened from a priviledge port on a
client doesn't mean that the opening process is owned by root: someone
could simply be spoofing.  

Why don't you simply ask the sysadmin to set up a port forwarder, such
that all connections to port 80 make it to port 9000?  (There are a few
ways to do this.  Talk to your sysadmin.)  Emphasize that you would 
therefore never ask him for root priviledges and he'll probably fall
over himself to help you. :)

Regards,

Nicholas Dronen