Extended attribute interfaces

[Marius Bendiksen]

> One idea that I continue to find uncomfortable is that the portable
> interface to POSIX.1e security labels would involve using EA interfaces
> -- i.e., I much prefer cap_get_file(), acl_get_file(), mac_get_file()
> because they work regardless of where the labels are actually stored
> (inode, EA, et al).  This suggests that portable backup tools (tar, et al)
> should use POSIX.1e interfaces for system/kernel attributes, and that
> local tools such as dump could access the EAs directly if they choose.

As a side comment here, I would like to point out that you might also want
to present EAs with portable (e.g. textual) data. As I discussed with you
on IRC, one might offer POSIX.1e extensions _both_ through the
*_get_file() mechanism, _and_ through a set of EAs.

/system/posix1e/capabilities
/native/posix1e/capabilities

The latter not being imported upon a restore to a different system, as it
would be system specific, but the former holding a textual equivalent
which was uniform across systems. The former is, of course, generated from
the binary data on-demand, and not actually backed by disk storage.

Marius

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