.\" 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 network byte order.
-.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).
+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) .
.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