[LSF/MM ATTEND] Richacls

[Andreas Gruenbacher <agruenba@redhat.com>]

Hello,

I would like to discuss the status and next steps for completing
richacl support (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richacls) in
the vfs, local file systems, nfs, cifs.

Right now, we don't have kernel support for a file permission
model powerful enough to support both POSIX permissions and
NFSv4 / CIFS access control lists at the same time.  As a result,
support for the NFSv4 and CIFS permission models is very limited,
and permission wise, Linux is neither a very good client nor
server to other systems.  For example, the permission to only
append to a file or to take ownership of a file cannot be
represented.  When files are copied across systems, file
permissions change or are lost.  This should be improved.

I've started working on this a long time ago but didn't have
enough time to complete it.  More recently, Aneesh Kumar has
spent time on this topic (http://lwn.net/Articles/596517/) but
eventually also stopped working on it.  Things have improved on
my side and I'll be able to work on this again now, though.

Thanks,
Andreas