introduce a new argument, "namespace", rather than relying on a first-
character namespace indicator. This is in line with more recent
thinking on EA interfaces on various mailing lists, including the
posix1e, Linux acl-devel, and trustedbsd-discuss forums. Two namespaces
are defined by default, EXTATTR_NAMESPACE_SYSTEM and
EXTATTR_NAMESPACE_USER, where the primary distinction lies in the
access control model: user EAs are accessible based on the normal
MAC and DAC file/directory protections, and system attributes are
limited to kernel-originated or appropriately privileged userland
requests.
o These API changes occur at several levels: the namespace argument is
introduced in the extattr_{get,set}_file() system call interfaces,
at the vnode operation level in the vop_{get,set}extattr() interfaces,
and in the UFS extended attribute implementation. Changes are also
introduced in the VFS extattrctl() interface (system call, VFS,
and UFS implementation), where the arguments are modified to include
a namespace field, as well as modified to advoid direct access to
userspace variables from below the VFS layer (in the style of recent
changes to mount by adrian@FreeBSD.org). This required some cleanup
and bug fixing regarding VFS locks and the VFS interface, as a vnode
pointer may now be optionally submitted to the VFS_EXTATTRCTL()
call. Updated documentation for the VFS interface will be committed
shortly.
o In the near future, the auto-starting feature will be updated to
search two sub-directories to the ".attribute" directory in appropriate
file systems: "user" and "system" to locate attributes intended for
those namespaces, as the single filename is no longer sufficient
to indicate what namespace the attribute is intended for. Until this
is committed, all attributes auto-started by UFS will be placed in
the EXTATTR_NAMESPACE_SYSTEM namespace.
o The default POSIX.1e attribute names for ACLs and Capabilities have
been updated to no longer include the '$' in their filename. As such,
if you're using these features, you'll need to rename the attribute
backing files to the same names without '$' symbols in front.
o Note that these changes will require changes in userland, which will
be committed shortly. These include modifications to the extended
attribute utilities, as well as to libutil for new namespace
string conversion routines. Once the matching userland changes are
committed, a buildworld is recommended to update all the necessary
include files and verify that the kernel and userland environments
are in sync. Note: If you do not use extended attributes (most people
won't), upgrading is not imperative although since the system call
API has changed, the new userland extended attribute code will no longer
compile with old include files.
o Couple of minor cleanups while I'm there: make more code compilation
conditional on FFS_EXTATTR, which should recover a bit of space on
kernels running without EA's, as well as update copyright dates.
Obtained from: TrustedBSD Project
9a38f7331a