On Sunday 22 June 2008 07:10:06 Chris Mason wrote: > On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 03:27 -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > Synthetic xattrs are a really utterly horrible interface. Xattrs on > > disk are nice and simple, but the Linux invention of making some up > > on the fly, starting with the Posix ACL interface makes the > > implementation not just utterly complicated but also confuses backup > > programs. > > The idea is that backup programs already know how to do xattrs and can > easily be changed to preserve them. Every ioctl interface we > create/make up has to be handed coded into the backup program. > > I know xattrs are ugly, but we need to weigh the cost of the perfect > interface with the availability of a common one. Dave Chinner had > talked about using xattrs to control file behavior in XFS as well, not > sure if that ever happened.
+1 for xattrs. From a user perspective, they're simpler than futzing around
with special btrfs programs to set/unset attributes, and as Chris points out,
having backup programs pick them up is a good thing.
If virtual xattrs are so complicated/messy to implement, perhaps they should
be made simpler. I honestly can't think of a better interface for something
like this.
-- Josh
--
Joshua J. Berry
"I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere."
-- /usr/games/fortune
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