[PATCH v6 08/43] fscrypt: add documentation about extent encryption

From: Daniel Vacek

Date: Fri Feb 06 2026 - 13:25:36 EST


From: Josef Bacik <josef@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Add a couple of sections to the fscrypt documentation about per-extent
encryption.

Signed-off-by: Josef Bacik <josef@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Vacek <neelx@xxxxxxxx>
---

v5: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-btrfs/7b2cc4dd423c3930e51b1ef5dd209164ff11c05a.1706116485.git.josef@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
* No changes since.
---
Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst | 41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 41 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst
index 70af896822e1..8afec55dd913 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/fscrypt.rst
@@ -283,6 +283,21 @@ alternative master keys or to support rotating master keys. Instead,
the master keys may be wrapped in userspace, e.g. as is done by the
`fscrypt <https://github.com/google/fscrypt>`_ tool.

+Per-extent encryption keys
+--------------------------
+
+For certain file systems, such as btrfs, it's desired to derive a
+per-extent encryption key. This is to enable features such as snapshots
+and reflink, where you could have different inodes pointing at the same
+extent. When a new extent is created fscrypt randomly generates a
+16-byte nonce and the file system stores it along side the extent.
+Then, it uses a KDF (as described in `Key derivation function`_) to
+derive the extent's key from the master key and nonce.
+
+Currently the inode's master key and encryption policy must match the
+extent, so you cannot share extents between inodes that were encrypted
+differently.
+
DIRECT_KEY policies
-------------------

@@ -1488,6 +1503,27 @@ by the kernel and is used as KDF input or as a tweak to cause
different files to be encrypted differently; see `Per-file encryption
keys`_ and `DIRECT_KEY policies`_.

+Extent encryption context
+-------------------------
+
+The extent encryption context mirrors the important parts of the above
+`Encryption context`_, with a few ommisions. The struct is defined as
+follows::
+
+ struct fscrypt_extent_context {
+ u8 version;
+ u8 encryption_mode;
+ u8 master_key_identifier[FSCRYPT_KEY_IDENTIFIER_SIZE];
+ u8 nonce[FSCRYPT_FILE_NONCE_SIZE];
+ };
+
+Currently all fields much match the containing inode's encryption
+context, with the exception of the nonce.
+
+Additionally extent encryption is only supported with
+FSCRYPT_EXTENT_CONTEXT_V2 using the standard policy, all other policies
+are disallowed.
+
Data path changes
-----------------

@@ -1511,6 +1547,11 @@ buffer. Some filesystems, such as UBIFS, already use temporary
buffers regardless of encryption. Other filesystems, such as ext4 and
F2FS, have to allocate bounce pages specially for encryption.

+Inline encryption is not optional for extent encryption based file
+systems, the amount of objects required to be kept around is too much.
+Inline encryption handles the object lifetime details which results in a
+cleaner implementation.
+
Filename hashing and encoding
-----------------------------

--
2.51.0