Re: reiser4 plugins

David Masover
2005-06-26T09:36:20Z

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Lincoln Dale wrote:
>
>
> David Masover wrote:
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>> Lincoln Dale wrote:
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>> [...]
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>>> this is the WHOLE point of standardization .. i don't think its that
>>> Reiser4's EAs offer any more or less capabilities than standard EAs -
>>>
>>
>>
>> They do. Reiser4's EAs can look like any other object -- files,
>> folders, symlinks, whatever. This is important, especially for
>> transparency.
>>
>>
> it was accepted not so long ago that 'file-as-directory' and 'EA' are
> two different things, predominantly because existing tools and apps
> won't necessarily "do the right thing<tm>".

They are different, but not quite -- what's the word -- discrete?
Rather, file-as-directory is one logical conclusion of EA, and one
possible representation of EA.

Anyway, Reiser's EAs currently (I think) could appear as files, but not
necessarily the file-as-directory madness we were talking about then.
They could also be accessed by openat. And they can also be
hierarchical, which I would think makes them cleaner and faster.

> this has been discussed to death previously. oh what a surprise.
> http://lwn.net/Articles/100271/

I was there. That was fun to watch, actually, once it got over my head.

The three points he lists are only relevent if you try to do
file-as-directory. Right now, I like the idea of file attributes as
showing up in separate magic directories, or just creating magic
directories first and filling them with files. Symlinks could help
clean up messiness, and allow you to do things like encrypt /etc/passwd
- -- symlink to /etc/crypto/passwd/decrypted or something. Yes, I know
about shadow, and there are still some paranoid reasons to encrypt passwd.

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