Any "blessed" way to run a plug in with root permissions ?

[asw24b]

I wanted to create a simple syslog listener so I can monitor my Apple AirPort for people trying to hack it from the outside.

The plug in would be ~30 lines of code; unfortunately when I try to open a listener on UDP port 514, I get:


Traceback (most recent call last):
File "plugin.py", line 123, in runConcurrentThread
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/twisted/internet/posixbase.py", line 364, in listenUDP
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/twisted/internet/udp.py", line 101, in startListening
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/twisted/internet/udp.py", line 109, in _bindSocket
<class 'twisted.internet.error.CannotListenError'>: Couldn't listen on any:514: (13, 'Permission denied').


Any creative ideas ?

Thanks !

Mike

[matt (support)]

How about using ipfw as detailed here so that the plugin is listening to a higher port number but that get forwarded to the lower (root only) port space?

[Perry The Cynic]

I wanted to create a simple syslog listener so I can monitor my Apple AirPort for people trying to hack it from the outside.

Whenever you're tempted to the root side of the force, look hard to see if you can stay on the righteous path instead. In your case, you can configure syslogd to receive log messages from network devices and write them to a local file that mere mortal processes can read. If you feel tricky, you can even make syslogd write to a named pipe or Unix Domain Socket that your plugin is listening on. It obviously depends on your comfort level with UNIX coding.

Cheers
-- perry