The only way to actually do it is to start as root and then drop privs to 
a different user. That's how the pros do it.

On Sat, 8 Feb 2014, Jeremy MountainJohnson wrote:

> Does anyone know how to listen to to say, 514 UDP, without being root? I'm
> working with splunk and would prefer to keep it running contained within
> it's own user:group. The Goog affords this,http://stackoverflow.com/questions/413807/is-there-a-way-for-non-root-proce
> sses-to-bind-to-privileged-ports-1024-on-l, is it the most efficient way to
> go about this?
> 
> Worst case scenario I would use iptables to redirect, but would prefer to
> leave syslog on it's standard port.
> 
> Thanks for any insight,
> 
> --
> Jeremy MountainJohnson
> Jeremy.MountainJohnson at gmail.com
> 
>