Re: Do xml-like namespaces make sense for Reiser4? (re: metas thread)

["John D. Heintz" <jheintz@pobox.com>]

Hi Grant,

No, I'm not familiar with this. I was trying to frame my questions 
strictly in terms of Reiser4 naming constructs (the '/' operator only).

Do the extended attributes show up as file system paths? Or is there a 
separate API to access them? If they show up as paths then I think they 
are very loosely like what I'm talking about: a shorthand syntax that by 
convention disabiguates similiar names.

Thanks for the reference, I'll look into this when time permits.

John

Grant Miner wrote:

>
> Are you familiar with the extended attribute name space?  An extended 
> attribute name has the form of namespace.attribute, eg. 
> user.mime-type, trusted.md5sum, or system.posix_acl_access. Currently 
> the user, trusted, and system extended attribute classes are defined; 
> more may be defined in the future.
>
> User  attributes  may  be  assigned to files and directories for 
> storing arbitrary  additional  information such  as  the  mime  type,  
> character set or encoding of a file. The  access  permissions  for 
> user attributes  are defined by the file permission bits.
>
> Trusted attributes  are  visible  and  accessible only  to  processes 
> that have the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability (the super user usually has 
> this capability). Attributes in  this  class  are  used to implement 
> mechanisms in user space (i.e., outside the kernel) which keep 
> information in extended attributes to which ordinary processes should 
> not have access.
>
> System attributes are used by the kernel to store system  objects such 
> as Access Control Lists and Capabilities. Read and write access 
> permissions to system attributes depend on the policy implemented for 
> each system attribute implemented in the kernel.
>
>