Deadwood is now stable

[Sam Trenholme]

I have letting MaraDNS users that after over a year of development
(OK, for most of 2008 that development was put on hold for personal
reasons), Deadwood is now stable.

Deadwood is the codebase that will (in theory) eventually become
MaraDNS' next recursive resolver.  Right now, the code does not have
recursion (it needs to contact a recursive DNS server, such as the DNS
server supplied by your ISP, to answer DNS question).  However, it
does have the following features MaraDNS does not have:

* Thread-free code, which is important for some *NIXes that do not
thread very well, and for embedded systems.

* The ability to write the cache to and from a file

* Full optional compile-time IPv6 support (Please thank Jean-Jacques
Sarton for supplying this code)

* TCP support provided by a separate helper program, also thread and
fork-free (but non-caching)

* "resurrection" support: The ability to pull an expired record from
cache if it is impossible to contact an upstream DNS server.

* A clean, easily maintained, and compact codebase.  The code has a
strong coding style enforced that makes the code more maintainable and
manageable.

* Correct handling of CNAME records

* Small footprint.  When compiled with -Os and stripped, the UDP
binary is only about 27k in size; the TCP binary is about the same
size.

MaraDNS still has the following features that Deadwood does not have:

* Full recursive support

* TTL aging: MaraDNS reduces the TTLs of records so they are not
cached as long until the records expire

* Resource record rotation, which works as a crude load balancer

Deadwood is available on the MaraDNS download page at
http://www.maradns.org/download.html and also at
http://www.maradns.org/deadwood

Any comments of this program can be sent to the list.

I hope people find this program useful.

- Sam

Note: I do not answer MaraDNS support requests sent by private email
without being compensated for my time. I will discuss rates if you
want this kind of support. Thank you for your understanding.

MaraDNS security vulnerability reports, however, will be dealt with
without charge and kept confidential.