User Xattr Support Finally Landing For NFS In Linux 5.9

[phoronix]

Phoronix: User Xattr Support Finally Landing For NFS In Linux 5.9

The NFS code going into Linux 5.9 is finally presenting support for user extended attributes (user xattrs)...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.9-NFS-Server-User-Xattr

[emblemparade]

I've been wanting this for years!

[zdzichu]

Is that mean working SELinux for nfs-root computers? If so – hurray!

[rene]

maybe the author should have plumbed that some decade ago then? ,-)

[rleigh]

I've been wanting this for years!

Likewise. It's been a major functionality gap.

Does anyone know if this will include full first-class support for NFSv4 ACLs in the Linux VFS like we already have on Solaris and FreeBSD? Will we also expect to see the same support in native ZFS mounts? How about ZFS mounts over NFSv4 or CIFS? Likewise for exports to other systems?

If this is comprehensive and pervasive, it will be a game changer. Right now, you have to use ZFS on FreeBSD to get all these goodies, and Linux doesn't see or use any of them. It really surprises me just how backward Linux has been here; this stuff is all over 15 years old at this point, and long available in other systems working perfectly.

[MadeUpName]

Does anyone know if this will include full first-class support for NFSv4 ACLs

That's what I am looking for and it would be awesome.

[zxy_thf]

Just can't stop dreaming of having a NFS Server and another Diskless workstation connected with RDMA over USB4!

[Hibiki Kanzaki]

If this is comprehensive and pervasive, it will be a game changer.

I agree, however since the idea of embedding metadata into the file has been so pervasive and ubiquitous for so long, I guess these features won't be nearly as big a game-changer as they could have been if they'd been adopted back in the day of ye olde "resource fork". But then again FTP had separate control and data channels, and that protocol essentially got tossed. I would also want the attributes to be robustly supported by zip and gzip and any other common kinds of archive files.

[jabl]

Does anyone know if this will include full first-class support for NFSv4 ACLs in the Linux VFS like we already have on Solaris and FreeBSD?

AFAICT, no. There has been a patch to add the required functionality to the Linux VFS for ages called richacls, https://www.kernel.org/doc/ols/2010/...ages-19-32.pdf , but the Linux VFS maintainer apparently hates the idea of ACL's in general so the project has never been merged.

[rleigh]

I agree, however since the idea of embedding metadata into the file has been so pervasive and ubiquitous for so long, I guess these features won't be nearly as big a game-changer as they could have been if they'd been adopted back in the day of ye olde "resource fork".

Absolutely agreed. I was surprised right from the start that there was never a concerted push to get XATTR support enabled by default in all Linux distributions. I just checked with Linux 5.7 and XATTRs are enabled by default now on filesystems which expose that as a configuration option, but for a long time that was off by default. Looks like ext4 has it on by default and no option to disable? I'm not sure when the defaults switched, but it took too long to get to this point.

The result of not being able to guarantee that XATTR support was available has meant that no developer could ever make real use of it, which is a real shame. Every application has always had to have a fallback, and in practice most just used the fallback and never bothered with XATTRs.