Server does not start after setting port to 80

Newer Linux system, such as Suse 12, do not allow non-root users to start processes in the port range below 1024. Since all of our products can be run as a webserver substitute they should be able to run on ports 80 and 443.

The default installation circumvents the problem by using higher ports, but will try to occupy the port 80/443 if they are free.

The result is, that the server does not start properly. The status of the service will contain something like the following code - specifically the last line with setcap

linux-9utt:/usr/share/i-net-helpdesk/Server # service helpdesk status
● helpdesk.service - LSB: i-net HelpDesk
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/helpdesk; bad; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Fri 2018-09-14 05:29:39 EDT; 18min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)

Sep 14 05:29:37 linux-9utt.suse helpdesk[7932]: Capabilites to enable system port range will be set now!
Sep 14 05:29:37 linux-9utt.suse helpdesk[7932]: xargs: setcap: No such file or directory

setcap is a command that allows non-root users to run programs that occupy ports below 1024. On Suse 12 you can install it with zypper:

sudo zypper install libcap-progs

Please check your logs for the setcap hint, install the dependency for your distribution and restart the server:

service <SERVICE NAME> restart

Please note: the program here was “helpdesk”, but it could also be “clear-reports-server” or “pdfc-server”.