[Samba] Purpose of the "ea support" option?

[Jeremy Allison]

On Tue, Oct 02, 2012 at 05:49:46PM +0100, jrmailgate-samba at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> 
> 
> Please can someone clarify the purpose of the "ea support = yes" option in smb.conf?
> 
> According to the man page, it's there to allow _clients_ to attempt to store OS/2 style extended attributes. As long as the underlying server filesystem supports EAs, this will work.
> 
> However, I've seen a number of references to setting "ea support = yes" when people just want to store DOS attributes and ACLs as extended attributes. 
> 
> 
> Am I right in thinking this isn't actually needed in this use case? (I've not got it set and things *seem* to be working, but want to check).

Yes you are right it isn't needed in this use case.

> Is "ea support" used by any clients apart from OS/2?

I believe Windows Services for UNIX uses EA's to store
symlinks and POSIX names containign invalid Windows
characters like ':' when exporting NFS.

Jeremy.