.\" along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
.\" Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
.\"
-.\" $Id$
-.\"
.TH AUTHBIND\-HELPER 8 "30th August 1998" "Debian Project" "Debian Linux manual"
.br
.SH NAME
authbind\-helper \- helper program to bind sockets to privileged ports without root
.SH SYNOPSIS
-.BI /usr/lib/authbind/helper " addr\-hex port\-hex " < socket
+.BI /usr/lib/authbind/helper " addr4\-hex port\-hex " < socket
+.br
+.BI /usr/lib/authbind/helper " addr6\-hex port\-hex 6 " < socket
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B helper
is the program used by
It may also be used standalone, i.e. without assistance from
.BR authbind .
Its standard input should be a TCP/IP socket, and it should be passed
-two arguments.
+two or three arguments.
.PP
The arguments are the address and port number, respectively, to which
-the caller desires that the socket be bound. They should be hex
-strings,
+the caller desires that the socket be bound, and the address family
+(ommitted for IPv4; the fixed string
+.B 6
+for IPv6).
+The address and port should be hex strings,
.I without
leading
.BR 0x ,
-of exactly the right length (8 and 4 digits, respectively), being
+of exactly the right length (8 or 32, and 4, digits, respectively), being
a pairs of hex digits for each byte in the address or port number when
expressed in host byte order. For example, the port argument is the
result of something like
.B sprintf(arg,
.B """%04X"",
.BR sin.sin_port) .
-.PP
-.B helper
-will not bind to ports 512 and onwards, because programs like
-.B rshd
-expect these to be used for outgoing connections, so allowing a user
-to bind to one of these would open up security hole(s).
.SH EXIT STATUS
.B helper
will exit with code 0 on success.
.SH AUTHOR
.B authbind
and this manpage were written by Ian Jackson. They are
-Copyright (C)1998
+Copyright (C)1998,2012
by him and released under the GNU General Public Licence; there is NO
WARRANTY. See
.B /usr/doc/authbind/copyright