[MaraDNS list] Deadwood update for November 2012

[Sam Trenholme]

After adding a domain to blacklist to my Deadwood server and
restarting the process, I discovered that Deadwood had a bug where it
would sometimes give out a confusing error message if the cache file
was older than the dwood3rc (configuration) file.
I fixed this problem by having Deadwood compare the timestamp for the
dwood3rc file and the cache file; if the cache file is older than the
dwood3rc file, Deadwood will now refuse to load the cache.

As it turns out, the interface for stat() that I use is identical in
Windows and *NIX. Another thing: I now understand why *NIX fanatics
hate it when you say that st_ctime is the creation time of the file:
In Windows, st_ctime is, indeed, the file's creation time. However, in
*NIX, it's the last time the inode (meta-information) for the file was
changed.

Here's an interesting question: Does the file's st_ctime change if the
files contents are changed, but no inode information is changed? Of
course, since the file's size and atime is in the inode, then I would
say st_ctime changes every time the file is changed. Indeed, since
inode information is changed every time the file is accessed, I think
it would make sense to change the st_ctime every time we change
st_atime (the last time a file was accessed).

st_ctime really should have been the file creation time if you ask me.
Windows, not *NIX, gets this right.

All of this, of course, is academic; Deadwood looks at st_mtime to
verify the cache is newer than the dwood3rc file.

It can be downloaded here:

http://www.maradns.org/deadwood/snap/

I plan to work on MaraDNS/Deadwood again one day in December, after
the 20th, unless a critical security bug with a CVE number is found.