Why HAProxy won't listen on port 80?

Fresh machine, no http servers are running (no httpd, no lighttpd, no nginx)

$ netstat -nat | grep 80 | grep LISTEN

yields nothing...

Here's my HAProxy conf, what can be the reason for HAProxy not to

global
        maxconn 72000
        daemon

defaults
        mode    http
        timeout connect 4000ms
        timeout client 60000ms
        timeout server 30000ms


frontend my_frontend
         bind *:80
         default_backend cdn

backend cdn
       server cdn1 10.177.0.17:80 开发者_C百科weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn2 10.177.1.92:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn3 10.177.1.147:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn4 10.177.1.202:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check

       server cdn4 10.177.1.202:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn5 10.177.1.211:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn6 10.177.1.93:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn7 10.177.1.230:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn8 10.177.0.7:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn9 10.177.0.196:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn10 10.177.1.82:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn11 10.177.0.124:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn12 10.177.1.142:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn13 10.177.1.58:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn14 10.177.1.137:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn15 10.177.1.169:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn16 10.177.0.187:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn17 10.177.1.95:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check
       server cdn18 10.177.1.123:80 weight 1 maxconn 8192 check

running haproxy-1.4.13 from source.

When I try to start it I get this error

[ALERT] 084/220004 (2409) : Starting frontend my_frontend: cannot bind socket

add global config parameter called user

user nobody

or some less privileged user. Still you need to start as root, but after acquiring the port process itself will reduce the user/privileges to nobody.

So I tried starting haproxy with the root user and it worked. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to run it under root though.

haproxy can run under some other user. such as nobody..