Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 03 Jan 2005 17:48:43 -0800 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: FAT, NTFS, CIFS and DOS attributes |
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Nicholas Miell wrote: > > The design isn't broken, you're just missing an important detail of what > the system namespace entails: > > xattrs in the system namespace have a format defined by the kernel and > (more importantly -- this is the important detail) modify kernel > behavior. > > If the xattr namespace was flat, I would have no way of knowing whether > or not the kernel will set the Archived bit in fatattrs (or DosAttrib) > xattr when I write to a file that has that xattr or whether or not the > kernel will choose to enforce the ACL I store in the posix_acl_access > xattr. > > With the system namespace, I can rely on the fact that xattrs in that > namespace actually have a meaning and are in sync with what the kernel > believes to be true about the file. >
What you're neglecting is that there is a LARGE class of metadata where the important thing is that you store them; if you don't know what they are you merely ignore them and keep them as-is.
There is no place for those in the current design.
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