Hi,
On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 08:45:28AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Extended attributes should be accessed by an interface that accesses them as files
>with a particular
> name.
That is a good goal, but it breaks down in some cases.
There already exist filesystems where named streams and named atomic
attributes both already exist. We need to differentiate between them.
There already exist attributes which cannot be made into a stream,
because we simply don't have access to the raw bits of the attribute
--- for example, ACLs on networked filesystems.
There exist attribute streams where the user may have write access to
some sections but not others --- again, ACLs spring to mind.
There exist attribute streams where we want type information to be
passed: the example of POSIX ACLs using authentication tokens other
than uid/gid is a good example, as Samba really wants to be able to
set up native ACLs with NT SIDs as identifiers.
Accessing extended attributes as if they were files is a useful API,
but there are structured attributes where we really need better
control over what is going on.
I'm not saying that we can't expose the extended attributes as files,
too --- just that such an API isn't sufficient for all cases.
Cheers,
Stephen
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in
the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
