Messages in this thread | | | From | Kyle Moffett <> | Subject | Re: Versioning file system | Date | Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:15:51 -0400 |
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On Jun 18, 2007, at 17:24:23, Brad Boyer wrote: > On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 12:26:57AM +0200, Jörn Engel wrote: >> Pointless here means that _I_ don't see the point. Maybe there >> are valid uses for extended attributes. If there are, noone has >> explained them to me yet. > > The users of extended attributes that I've dealt with are ACL > support and SELinux. These both use extended attributes under the > covers. It's just not immediately obvious if you aren't looking.
Yeah, extended attributes are typically used for exactly that: "attributes" like labels, permissions, encoding, cached file-type, DOS/Windows/Mac metadata, etc. Sometimes people suggest sticking icons in there, but that's probably a bad idea. At most stick an "icon label" attribute which refers to a file "/usr/share/icons/ by_attr/$ICON_LABEL.png". If you're trying to put more than 256 bytes of data in an extended attribute then you're probably doing something wrong. They're very good for cached attributes (like file- type) where you don't care if the data is lost by "tar", and they're reasonable for security-related attributes where you don't want attribute-unaware programs trying to save and restore them (like SELinux labels).
Cheers, Kyle Moffett
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