Well, I've got lots of answers, looks like an easy question.
The outcome is that traceroute needs access to /dev/nit, which is
available only to root, for security reasons. That's because it works
by sending packets with special values of the time-to-live parameter,
and to construct them it's necessary to have access to the raw
protocol, which is a root priviledge.
It should thus be made suid root if others want to use it. Notice that
this is the same for ping.
Thanks to all who responded:
Timothy G. Smith <tgsmith@Sun.COM>
Jim Lick <jim@pi-chan.ucsb.edu>
Casper Dik <casper@fwi.uva.nl>
nelson.fernandez@att.com
Dan Schlitt <dan@ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu>
Christopher Hoover <ch@lks.csi.com>
<Piete.Brooks@cl.cam.ac.uk>
Steve Simmons <scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us>
Pekka.Nikander@ajk.tele.fi
trinkle@cs.purdue.edu (Daniel Trinkle)
lf@gsc.ele.puc-rio.br (Luis Fernando V. Gomes)
Carlos
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