This Space for Rent

Hmpf.

I still can't think of a good way to do the privileged interface to the weblog. The best way I can think of so far is to put magic cookies into the index page and have a cgi script in post that expands them to little [post] [update] [delete] buttons.

But instead of that, I've been tweaking on the POSTOFFICE program. I found a bug in the local delivery code that would not go back to being root if it failed while opening the mailbox (I found this while trying to put in code that detects if a file is actually a symlink (executive summary; no, it's not easy. If I fstat() a fileno(), it's already skipped over the symlink and is pointing at the actual file. I'm not really sure what's the best way to beat up on this problem is, so I'll just have to stick with the current security policy of refusing to write to any files except /var/spool/mail/root if I'm root.

I've also added a goodness() function to POSTOFFICE so I can have a crude indication of how ill-behaved a SMTP client is. It keeps a little list of how bad or good a client is (successful mail is GOOD, unsuccessful mail is BAD, repeated attempts to send mail to bogus recipients (or mail from: someone while they're in the greylist) is BAD, and if you're bad enough, you get ipfwed away until tomorrow.

Be that as it may, I don't want to forget the ob railroad picture:

Taken on Sunday while we drove by the NW Portland BN yard on the way back from St Johns.