On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 10:34:38AM +1000, Martin Pool wrote: > This draft patch adds support for transferring extended attributes > with a new --xattr option. It ought to work on Linux with XFS or > ext2/ext3 filesystems with the SGI/bestbits attribute system. > > It is partially working, but there seems to be some kind of hang bug > while transferring the file list. I suspect it might be provoking a > problem in io.c. > > You need to rerun autoconf, autoheader and configure after applying > it. > > There is no mtime for xattrs, so they are transferred every time as > part of the file list. This means that they will be updated correctly > if you change attributes but do not change the file.
That lack of an mtime for xattr could well cause difficulties for backup systems as well. Perhaps a note to the filesystems people is in order. The problem is that you can't use mtime for these. It really needs its own timestamp, perhaps as a mandatory system attribute. I don't much care for sending the xattrs as part of the file list. Even the 4KB ext[23] _currently_ limit it to is huge. > I wrote this because it was required by a colleague. I have mixed > feelings about whether this ought to be merged, even once it's working > correctly. rsync hardly needs more options or protocol > variations. :-( (Amusingly enough I once said "-xattr" instead of > "--xattr" and it silently did something else.) I don't have a problem with the idea of adding such an option and protocol variant to rsync. Doing it this way i do have more than mixed feelings about merger. My feelings on this are already well articulated in the archives. Nevertheless i do think it worth having something in patches. I have a vague recollection of an earlier patch that did an lsattr and synced that before applying it, perhaps something in that vein might be more apropos. -- To unsubscribe or change options: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
