From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 5 00:05:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D022816A4CE for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 00:05:05 +0000 (GMT) Received: from digger1.defence.gov.au (digger1.defence.gov.au [203.5.217.4]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8469343D64 for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 00:05:04 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from wilkinsa@squash.dsto.defence.gov.au) Received: from ednmsw501.dsto.defence.gov.au (ednmsw501.dsto.defence.gov.au [131.185.2.150]) by digger1.defence.gov.au with ESMTP id j4501Pgk016431 for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 09:31:25 +0930 (CST) Received: from muttley.dsto.defence.gov.au (unverified) by ednmsw501.dsto.defence.gov.au (Content Technologies SMTPRS 4.3.17) with ESMTP id for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 09:32:53 +0930 Received: from ednex501.dsto.defence.gov.au (ednex501.dsto.defence.gov.au [131.185.2.81]) by muttley.dsto.defence.gov.au (8.11.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id j44NuC026030 for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 09:26:12 +0930 (CST) Received: from squash.dsto.defence.gov.au ([131.185.40.212]) by ednex501.dsto.defence.gov.au with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13) id J84NPQJB; Thu, 5 May 2005 09:26:01 +0930 Received: from squash.dsto.defence.gov.au (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by squash.dsto.defence.gov.au (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j4500iLc028181 for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 09:30:44 +0930 (CST) (envelope-from wilkinsa@squash.dsto.defence.gov.au) Received: (from wilkinsa@localhost) by squash.dsto.defence.gov.au (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id j4500ioC028180 for freebsd-arch@freebsd.org; Thu, 5 May 2005 09:30:44 +0930 (CST) (envelope-from wilkinsa) Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 09:30:44 +0930 From: "Wilkinson, Alex" To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20050505000041.GA28165@squash.dsto.defence.gov.au> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org References: <20050503155347.GA3768@crodrigues.org> <20050504234531.V40267@fledge.watson.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20050504234531.V40267@fledge.watson.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i Subject: Re: Aligning extended attributes API with Mac OSX? X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 00:05:06 -0000 0n Wed, May 04, 2005 at 11:50:01PM +0100, Robert Watson wrote: > >On Tue, 3 May 2005, Craig Rodrigues wrote: > >>An extended attributes API was just added to Mac OSX 10.4. This API >>looks very similar to FreeBSD's. Right now there is no POSIX standard >>for extended attributes, but EA are useful for many different types of >>things. >> >>I don't know if EA are widely used in applications on FreeBSD, but what >>do people think about aligning our API with Mac OSX? >> >>Here are the man pages for some of the API's: > >I've actually started looking through the kernel parts of the EA APIs, and >will shortly be working my way to system calls, library calls, etc. It is >my intent to adopt more widely used APIs as appropriate -- when I added EA >APIs to FreeBSD, the only comparable APIs I knew of were the HPFS extended >attribute model, and the SGI XFS model. I modeled our EA semantics on the >SGI model, following meetings and e-mail exchanges with members of SGI's >trusted OS group. I had hoped that we'd pursuade others to pick up our >APIs, such as the Linux ACL and capability developers, but apparently I >was unsuccessful in doing that, although we did reach concensus on >elements of the POSIX.1e draft ACL APIs in a number of areas. > >So this is something I am willing and happy to look at; we'll need to go >through a proper deprecation cycle, and it will happen time permitting. >If you're interested in looking into the details and summarizing the >specific changes, that might be quite helpful. In particular, one of the >more important aspects of our design, derived from SGI's design, is the >association of protection properties with "name spaces". I.e., a system >name space that requires privilege to manipulate, so can hold system >maintained properties, such as ACLs and MAC labels, vs a user name space, >which is protected using the normal permissions/ACLs on a file, permitting >users to modify the contents. Determining to what extent protections are >handled/managed in the Darwin model will be important. > >I'm scheduled to visit Apple shortly after BSDCan to talk about these and >related issues -- if you come up with specific questions or concerns >before then, I can raise them during my visit. FYI there is a solid review of Tiger at arstechnica (109 pages). Here is the section on macos-x's EA: [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/7] - aW