FAT, NTFS, CIFS and DOS attributes
tridge at samba.org
tridge at samba.org
Tue Jan 4 00:58:18 GMT 2005
> Oh geez. Couldn't you have split out the various data items into
> separate xattrs?
fetching and setting this stuff is _really_ common, so I have arranged
to store them in a way to make it as efficient as possible. For
example, when a remote client asks for a directory listing we need to
fetch just one xattr from the kernel per file (directory listings
in the windows world usually return the equivalent of a full stat
structure for every name).
Similarly, when these are set the client tends to set more than one at
a time. The most commonly used set call takes this structure:
/* RAW_SFILEINFO_BASIC_INFO and
RAW_SFILEINFO_BASIC_INFORMATION interfaces */
struct {
enum smb_setfileinfo_level level;
union setfileinfo_file file;
struct {
NTTIME create_time;
NTTIME access_time;
NTTIME write_time;
NTTIME change_time;
uint32_t attrib;
} in;
} basic_info;
Having the items that tend to get read/written together grouped
together allowed me to make it all quite efficient, while still having
a reasonable chance of the EAs all fitting in-inode on filesystems
that support that.
Obviously it is racy when dealt with from user space, but there really
is no way to avoid all these races without a user space accessible
"lock the files meta-data" call and that is why I'm looking forward to
having a Samba LSM module to avoid these races.
> Samba clearly has other needs than other users, although of course
> it would be unfortunate if Samba then can't export this
> information.
I think you'll find that all users of dos attributes on Linux will
have very similar needs to Samba, and will want these things grouped
together. For example:
- backup/restore apps will want to backup/restore these attributes as
lumps
- wine implements essentially the same APIs as Samba, just in a
different form, and so tends to get the same groupings of
attributes get/set calls that Samba does (the SMB protocol is to a
large degree a on-the-wire version of Win32).
Are there any other significant users of DOS attributes on Linux that
want something different?
Cheers, Tridge
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