How the heck can it work?

[Steve Langasek]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, Gerald Carter wrote:

> > 2. The inetd.conf. It specifies root as one of the 
> > parameters. Why?

> In order to bind to the privildged port 901 (as a 
> general rule).

Not exactly... inetd is the program that binds to port 901.  Swat doesn't need
to bind to anything, it just reads the socket that inetd passes to it.  The
root privs are used during authentication (in the case of shadow passwords or
the like) and so the program can change uid's after authentication.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer