Re: [PATCH v18 19/22] richacl: Add richacl xattr handler

[J. Bruce Fields]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 12:10:14AM -0700, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 09:19:05AM -0500, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 06:17:35AM -0800, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 09:17:24AM +0100, Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:
> > > > Add richacl xattr handler implementing the xattr operations based on the
> > > > get_richacl and set_richacl inode operations.
> > > 
> > > Given all the issues with Posix ACLs and selinux attributes these really
> > > should be proper syscalls instead of abusing the xattr interface.
> > 
> > What are those problems exactly?
> 
> That people get confused between the attr used by the xattr syscall
> interface and the attr used to store things on disk or the protocol.
> This has happened every time we have non-native support, e.g. XFS, NFS,
> CIFS, ntfs, etc.  And it's only going to become worse.

How has that confusion caused problems in practice?

--b.