Re: [Ext2-devel] [RFC] [PATCH 3/4] Add extended attributes to ext2/3

[Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de>]

On Tuesday 08 October 2002 20:53, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > +#ifdef CONFIG_EXT3_FS_XATTR_USER
> > +		if (!strcmp (this_char, "user_xattr"))
> > +			set_opt (*mount_options, XATTR_USER);
>
> If we really want a user_xattr mount option I'd suggest
> taking it into VFS.  But IMHO it's rather useless, just don't
> access them if you don't want to.

Users might just fill up all xattr space leaving no space for ACLs (or 
similar). If user xattrs are disabled this can no longer occur, so some 
administrators might be happy to have a choice.

> Also please get rid of the registration API for xattr handlers - this
> is inside a single module so hardconding them in the inode operations
> won't hurt.  the additional lock for the registration OTOH may hurt and
> it looks really overengineered.

With the registration API modules doing HSM/LSM/... can just register handlers 
without having to modify the file system code. Otherwise we would have to 
hand code additional hooks for independently loadable modules.

--Andreas.