it turned out that Centova Cast was in fact simply overwriting it, plain and simple. My apologies -- hope that didn't cause you any diagnostic aggro!
no aggro at all, it helped improve the config and authhash update code so that's a good use of time.
I had forgotten that after I discovered that SC2 likes to write to its own configuration file (which is a bit unusual for a daemon in the UNIX world) ... Now it runs under the same UID so it can do whatever it likes, for better or for worse.
yeah, i can see it being deemed as a bit strange but is the lesser of two evils as allowing the authhash management to be done in-DNAS makes things a lot easier (especially with builds without some of the issues the public build has) then having to go to shoutcast.com, registering there, creating the authhash and then adding it into the config file.
that was causing too many issues and complaints and so the in-DNAS option came about since it can be done in 3 clicks to go from and back to the server admin page if all of the details from the source are what is wanted
well the main thing is that it seems to be working ok in combination with things which is good for all concerned.
[edit]
there we go, finally managed to post the reply. kept getting a "could not open socket" error for the last few hours trying after clicking on the post button.
-daz