[PATCH] Ext4: Make file creation time, i_version and i_generation available by xattrs

[Andreas Dilger]

On 2010-06-28, at 13:41, Steve French wrote:
> I think backing them up makes sense, even if they can't easily
> be restored (ie just for reporting).

Right.  I think being able to restore the crtime (as root) makes sense, I don't think restoring i_generation and i_version make sense however, given that we can't preserve the inode number.  The filesystem can silently ignore them when they are written as xattrs (returning an error gives "tar" and "cp" heartburn, we've found).

> Are there security differences between the "trusted" namespace that
> would make it harder for an app to read them (the man page did not list
> the security differences between trusted and user xattrs).

"trusted." is only writeable by root and the kernel.  "user." is writeable by regular users.

Cheers, Andreas