alt Hacker NewsThis whole privileged port thing is an outdated convention from the time when Linux ran on mainframes. Depending on your use case, it can be perfectly fine to lower it. I have set to `net.ipvX.ip_unprivileged_port_start = 80` on my server so that I can run rootless containers without extra privileges and have them bind to ports 80 and up.
Replies
dboreham • yesterday at 11:16 PM
lol the before times when Linux ran on mainframes.
It does run on IBM 370 type mainframes, but that port was done years after it first ran on the 386, and isn't in any way relevant to low port numbers.
Nits: It's a Unix convention (not just Linux), and Unix traditionally ran on minicomputers (not mainframes). Mainframes had their own specialized OSes, although some could run Unix in a partition or virtual machine.