Re: Extended attributes, Linux and GNOME

["Manuel Amador (Rudd-O)" <amadorm usm edu ec>]

> > This is the behavior I'd like:
> >
> > Say you got your /var mounted without EA support, but your /home mounted 
> > with EA support.
> >
> > Nautilus should use .nautilus-metafiles in /var.  Nautilus should use 
> > EAs in /home.  Perhaps Nautilus may keep a copy of the metadata as 
> > .nautilus-metafiles in /home, but use EAs as the primary source.  So if 
> >    
>
> Righty, that would be necessary for any kind of reliability - but then
> its a waste.  I'd think it better to just wait for user-space to fully
> support EA's, then let Nautilus/GVFS switch over to them completely
> (when on file-systems that support it).
Look, I can't get through my thick skull that you don't understand 
*fundamentally why* I'm advocating for early EA adoption.

The current behavior (metafiles) is sloppy, is NOT reliable and won't 
EVER be reliable.  Writable directories get littered by 
.nautilus-metafiles.  Non-writable directories don't get their 
properties set in system-wide fashion.  The security semantics for 
attributes to which you don't have access is unclear.  EA solves that. 

*AS a fallback*, perhaps Nautilus would be interested to store a backup 
in $HOME, but as you can see, backups in $HOME (the CURRENT behavior) 
are worth crock in shared directory scenarios.  Maybe that would seem 
wasteful to you.  Me, I'd rather avoid storing any backup data and 
directly store EAs on volumes that support it.  The backup is an answer 
to your problem (which fundamentally doesn't exist, because, as the 
current situation stands, manipulating files without Nautilus may 
automatically yield invalid metafiles.  I agree the fileutils family 
doesn't directly support EAs yet, but be sure that they won't ever 
directly support nautilus metafiles)

I don't see how waiting for userspace tools to support EAs is going to 
yield an advantage.  If at all, it's worse for EA filesystems because we 
wouldn't be supporting adoption.

EAs are a clean solution.

> Also be good to have Nautilus/Gnome-VFS be capable of recognizing when
> moving/copying files between different mount points, and converting
> attr's between xml dotfiles and EA's - also warn when security
> permissiosn (ACL's, etc.) will be lost or modified.
Evidently.  This is already done at some extent (copying files to 
volumes which don't support chmods).

> > you decide to downgrade to Red Hat 5.2 tomorrow (exaggeration), 
> > everything would still work and your data would be safe.
> >
> > As you can see, EAs and most other things are per-volume options, not 
> > per-computer.
> >    
> Yes, I know.  I actually run all my systems with kernels patched for
> EA's - I find them rather useful especially on my servers w/ web and MUD
> directories (the ACL's bit of EA's, anyways).