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2017

  • 7 min read

debian stretch: upgrade 32-bit to 64-bit

There are various reasons why one would prefer 64-bit over 32-bit (or not); basically it is about improved ABI (passing arguments in registers), bigger register (can be faster) versus higher memory usage (because pointers are twice as big). In some corner cases you want 64-bit to be able to use more memory in your programs (32-bit kernels can often handle more than 4G memory, but 32-bit userspace programs can’t).

  • 1 min read

systemd: allow normal process to bind to privileged port

Sometimes services are started by systemd with already dropped privileges, for example inspircd.service starts as irc user.

Such services cannot bind to priliged ports (< 1024) usually - in this case I needed it to listen to port 443 though (additionally to some high port) to allow users behind special firewall configurations to connect to the server.

The solution is to add the following to the service (for example by running systemctl edit inspircd.service):

[Service]
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE