Linux allows you to view and change the ephemeral port range by simply using the file /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range. For example, this shows the default configuration on a kernel 2.2 system:
$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range
1024 4999
To change this to the preferred range, you could do (as superuser):
# echo "49152 65535" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range
