# working as non-root -> socket: permission denied (solved)

## andi_s

hello,

if i work as root everything works as exspected. (no DNS, ping, etc. problems)

however, if i work as a normal user i always get "permission denied", if i try to ping google.com etc.

with postfix and exim i have the same problem

```

mail.log (postfix)

fatal: smtp_connect_addr: socket: Permission denied

mainlog.log (exim4)

... R=smarthost T=remote_smtp_smarthost defer (13): Permission denied

```

so this problem ist not application related. always if a user/program with non-root rights tries to open/create a socket - it fails with permission denied.

thanks.Last edited by andi_s on Tue Nov 16, 2010 9:08 pm; edited 2 times in total

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## Anarcho

The ping command should normally be setuid so even running it as a normal user will cause it to run with superuser rights. It could be that this bit is missing (check via ls -l /bin/ping) or that your root partition is mounted with the option "nosuid".

For the other programs: Opening a port < 1024 always requires superuser rights, so a mailserver on the standard smtp port (port 25) will always require to at least start as root.

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## andi_s

after make clean and rebuilding the kernel the issue seems to be solved

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