Re: Making an interface for alternative data streams

[Richard Yao <ryao@gentoo.org>]

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On 03/21/2016 02:11 PM, Richard Yao wrote:
> I am thinking of implementing Solaris-style alternative data streams in
> the ZFSOnLinux driver via an ioctl and writing a compatibility shim so
> that software written to use O_XATTR can be trivially adapted to use the
> interface.
> 
> I sketched out the fine details on github:
> 
> https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/4437
> 
> I would be much happier if the VFS gave filesystem drivers the ability
> to implement O_XATTR. That would avoid the need to (ab)use an ioctl for
> this and eliminate the risk of using a bit that would be defined to mean
> something else. The former risks permissions checks becoming stale while
> the latter is a situation that I would be happy to avoid.
> 
> Since this sort of interface is applicable to NFS too, I wanted to ask
> what various mainline developers think about it before I tried doing an
> initial implementation.
> 

Maybe I should clarify that the idea is to allow read/write/list of
extended attributes via read/write/readdir so that those that want
extended attributes that are alternative data streams can have them. I
do not want to see extended attributes and alternative data streams be
different things. Alternative data streams are in the NFSv4
specification, so I thought that the developers of the NFS client driver
would want something like this.

If it went into the VFS, then existing in-tree filesystems could have it
mapped to the existing interface, which would allow it to work
everywhere extended attributes are implemented. If they are not
interested, then I could go ahead with my ioctl idea. I just wanted to
try to implement this in a way everyone who can use it would like so
that we can avoid a XKCD #927 situation in the future:

https://xkcd.com/927/


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