Re: libpq port number handling

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Sam Mason <sam@samason.me.uk> writes:
>> +             if (portnum < 1 || portnum > 65535)
>
> BTW, it strikes me that we could tighten this even more by rejecting
> target ports below 1024.  This is guaranteed safe on all Unix systems
> I know of, because privileged ports can only be listened to by root-owned
> processes and we know the postmaster won't be one.  I am not sure
> whether it would be possible to start the postmaster on a low-numbered
> port on Windows though.  Anyone know?  Even if it's possible, do we
> want to allow it?

I don't think we get much benefit out of artificially limiting libpq
in this way.  In 99.99% of cases it won't matter, and in the other
0.01% it will be a needless annoyance.  I think we should restrict
ourselves to checking what is legal, not what we think is a good idea.

...Robert