BIND as non-root

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 07:41:57PM -0700, Sheer El-Showk wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Why does no body run bind as non-root? 

I do.

> Is it just a matter of needing
> access to port 53 or are there other considerations?  Would it be possible
> to use something like port forwarding to overcome this limitation?

In order to bind() to a privileged port (< 1024) the program needs to have
root privileges. Afterwards the privileges can be dropped and BIND can run
as an unprivileged user (use the -g -u options for that).

You could run bind entirely as an unprivileged user if you had a firewall
that does port forwarding, I guess...