[Box Backup-dev] Extended attributes on FreeBSD 5/6

[James O'Gorman]

On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 02:45:17AM +0000, Martin Ebourne wrote:
> I have no plans to do any specific work on ACLs since they are supported
> on Linux due to their xattr based implementation. I don't mind adding
> new features if they come without too much effort while doing other
> related work (like restructure the attributes code which is planned),
> but not otherwise. Always happy to help others though.

OK - just so I do understand, when you say ACLs are "supported on Linux
due to their xattr based implementation", does that mean that on Linux
if a file has an ACL, that will be backed up and restored as well? Quite
nifty if so..

> > I had another look and as well as sys/acl.h there's a sys/extattr.h.
> > 
> > http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/sys/ has these files.
> 
> Well the interface is definitely unique - different header, very
> different function names. However, the parameters are similar so it's
> possible it might not be hard to support the xattrs. Can't tell without
> reading the man pages though.

Here's the extattr manpages:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=extattr&apropos=0&sektion=3&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-RELEASE&format=html
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=extattr&apropos=0&sektion=9&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-RELEASE&format=html

> First you'd need to find out if xattr support on FreeBSD gets you acl
> support anyway.

I think it looks like that's a no, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

This gives a bit more information:
http://www.trustedbsd.org/components.html

James