Return-Path: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org Received: from mx11.netapp.com ([216.240.18.76]:42121 "EHLO mx11.netapp.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755143Ab3JXQab convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Oct 2013 12:30:31 -0400 From: "Myklebust, Trond" To: Christoph Anton Mitterer CC: "" Subject: Re: XATTRs in NFS? Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:30:30 +0000 Message-ID: <625CAA34-BD6C-4283-86D0-3F8B460D54D0@netapp.com> References: <1382560643.6924.12.camel@heisenberg.scientia.net> <1382624000.6907.8.camel@heisenberg.scientia.net> <1382630468.6907.58.camel@heisenberg.scientia.net> In-Reply-To: <1382630468.6907.58.camel@heisenberg.scientia.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Oct 24, 2013, at 5:01 PM, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: > On Thu, 2013-10-24 at 14:32 +0000, Myklebust, Trond wrote: >> Linux xattrs are a rabid mess. > Well... might be from a technical POV, but for users they're quite > useful in some scenarios. > > >> The whole "system" namespace is something that cannot and should not ever be exposed on a network. >> The "trusted" and "user" namespaces just offer specialised storage. Why are they needed? > Well what I do is attaching integrity information to files. > > You may say now that this is similar to what btrfs will provide > anyway... but the problem with that is, that checksums are always > updated when something in the system does valid changes to the file. > > What I however want is that I really manually have to set this, so that > I notice "accidental" changes, e.g. by myself or by buggy software... > > >> If the data needs to follow the file, then store it in the file. Why do you need the filesystem to manage that for you? > ... and since this applies to arbitrary files, from text-files over > pictures, videos to binaries,... it's neither possible to store this in > the file, nor can I really track this with an database,... since > literally any program that uses such files, from the picture editor to > the file-manager would need to use such DB. Those programs need to recompute the checksum data anyway in order to verify and/or update it. Checksums that are computed by some third party application have exactly zero value for integrity checking. Trond