I’ve updated the blog

I’ve added a couple of things to the left sidebar of the blog:

• A pointer to a FAQ with some guidelines on what comments get approved or rejected here
• A search tool so people can search for information in older blog entries

Please read the blog FAQ before posting a comment here; the FAQ describes what comments I approve and reject.

Deadwood 2.6.01 released

Deadwood 2.6.01 released.

This is a Deadwood release with a significant part of full recursion implemented: The code that analyzes an incoming DNS packet to determine what the next course of action should be (send the reply to the stub resolver, contact another NS server, look up a different hostname because we got a CNAME referral, etc.), complete with security checks like bailiwick verification, has been done.

Right now, the code that caches an entry runs this code to massage a DNS packet; this results in the packets Deadwood returning from cache looking different (anything that isn’t an answer to our question is now removed from a DNS packet). Indeed, I had to overhaul the SQA tests to reflect this change.

This is an important step in giving Deadwood full recursion so I can get MaraDNS 2.0 out the door.

It can be looked at here:

http://maradns.org/deadwood/testing/

New Deadwood snapshot: All sqa tests (but 1) pass

All sqa tests modified or bugs in program fixed so that the tests past, with the exception of the "sqa_tcp_buffering_2" test. (Update: The issue was that this particular test is a bit unreliable and doesn’t always pass. I got it to pass once in both the 32-bit and 64-bit environment so I closed this issue and released 2.6.01)

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Here’s a cool link:


http://gilesorr.com/wm/table.html

This lists every single Window manager for X that exists. Every single last one.

I’m still using FVWM1 from 1995; I will use something more recent when and if someone makes a Window manager that supports:

• Seamless focus follows mouse (When I tried FVWM2, its focus-follows-mouse was buggy)
• Multiple workspaces
• Multiple windows inside each workspace. What FVWM supports which I haven’t seen any newer WM do is, in addition to having multiple workspaces, each workspace is a virtual screen larger than one’s desktop; applications can be moved from one desktop to the other by simply dragging the window past the edge of the screen.

New Deadwood snapshot: Getting ready for Deadwood 2.6

I have finished up the code generating packets telling the upcoming fully recursive release of Deadwood what to do when they get a packet upstream. At this point, packets processed by this code are stored in the cache as-is.

Next: Test the code; make changes as needed should the tests find any bugs, and then release Deadwood 2.6.01.

My final ObHack release

A while ago, I found a minor bug in ObHack which Fritz fixed.

I have finally gotten around to integrating Fritz’s patch in to my version of ObHack, which I call “ObHack-006b-pl1” (ObHack release 006b patchlevel 1). This is simply ObHack 006b with Fritz’s patch.

Barring a security hole in ObHack, this will be my last ObHack release. Fritz is the current maintainer and has made a lot of improvements and changes which I encourage people to download and use. Also, Andrew has very recently made a release of Oblige which makes some impressive maps.

As always:

http://samiam.org/slump/

New Deadwood snapshot: NS referral format revised

I have slightly revised the format of a NS referral in the second Deadwood snapshot for today. In the revised NS referral, we start off the string describing the NS referral with a single DNS label (DNS name) describing where in the DNS space the referral string points to (whether this packet should point to NS servers for all of the .com records, the google.com NS servers or what not).

Besides this, the format of a NS referral is identical.

New Deadwood snapshot

Updated INSTALL.txt to be current with post-2.3 Deadwood changes.

dwx_remake_complete_reply(), which remakes a "complete" NS reply with all records which do not directly answer the question removed, implemented.

Next: Make sure we handle NXDOMAIN replies correctly, then have it so Deadwood puts dwx_cache_reply()-made answers in to the cache.

As always:

http://maradns.org/deadwood/