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Subject: Re: ext4: Remove deprecated noacl/nouser_xattr options
From:   Patrik Schindler <poc@pocnet.net>
In-Reply-To: <20230116104254.xpphncpzu3zf53va@quack3>
Date:   Mon, 16 Jan 2023 13:25:07 +0100
Cc:     linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, Ted Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
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 <20230116104254.xpphncpzu3zf53va@quack3>
To:     Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
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Hello Jan,

thanks for your kind response.


Am 16.01.2023 um 11:42 schrieb Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>:

> On Sun 15-01-23 23:56:21, Patrik Schindler wrote:
>> sorry for contacting you directly, but I struggle to find relevant
>> information on this topic.
>=20
> This is best discussed on ext4 development mailing list (added to CC).

Am I required to join that list?

>> In this web page is documented that "noacl" for ext4 is deprecated.
>>=20
>> =
https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/linux-ext4/patch/1658977369-2478-1-gi=
t-send-email-xuyang2018.jy@fujitsu.com/
>>=20
>> Do you have some background information at hand why noacl is =
deprecated,
>> and how to get the functionality of noacl after this change?
>=20
> Yes, these options were deprecated for a long time (10 years) and now =
they are removed since nobody complained. The reasoning is in commit =
f70486055ee ("ext4: try to deprecate noacl and noxattr_user mount =
options"):
>=20
> No other file system allows ACL's and extended attributes to be =
enabled or disabled via a mount option.  So let's try to deprecate these =
options from ext4.

Understood.

> And it makes sense to me. It looks a bit strange and dangerous to =
disable (part of) permission checks for the files. What usecase did you =
have for it?

I'm using Debian Linux 11.

When copy Files from my Mac via Samba to ext4 volumes, ACLs get added. =
(Much) earlier, this wasn't the case, and just UNIX permissions were in =
effect. For me, UNIX permissions are totally sufficient, and I can =
easily see what's going on with ls -l. For ACLs, I need to individually =
fiddle with get/setfacl.

This feels cumbersome to me and gives me a sense not having immediate =
control over access rights. Thus I'd like to find a way to get the =
previous behavior back. Ideally without recompiling samba to remove ACL =
support, as outlined here: =
https://serverfault.com/questions/828977/how-can-i-stop-samba-from-writing=
-extended-acls

For a very long time I had noacl in my fstab but with the update to =
Debian 11, I saw the message about the deprecation. Not sure when I =
observed ACLs being actually written by Samba, though.

In addition, even newer Google hits almost entirely state "noacl in =
fstab to suppress ACLs for ext4", so I'm probably not the only one =
trying to disable them and people largely failed to understand that =
noacl has no effect anymore.

Thanks!

:wq! PoC