Re: XFS ACLs, Samba 2.2, EAs and the Linux 2.4.4 kernel

[John M Trostel <jtrostel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As Nathan mentioned, I have been doing a bit of work integrating XFS 
ACLs into Samba 2.2.  Some answers to specific parts of your questions 
are written below:

Federico Sevilla III wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm new to the list and to XFS. I am doing preliminary research to assess
> whether we should use XFS in our Samba server or not. We intend to use the
> latest release of Samba (v2.2) which supposedly supports XFS ACLs, on a
> Linux machine with the latest Linux 2.4.4 kernel patched up to support XFS
> Release 1.0.
>
> Has anyone actually set up a server with Samba 2.2 acknowledging XFS ACLs?

I am running several servers using XFS ACLs on Samba 2.2, including my 
personal machine. While some small issues are being worked through, the 
setup generally works well.

> Also, there is this Extended Attributes and Access Control Lists for Linux
> project at <http://acl.bestbits.at/>. It looks to me like this is a bunch
> of patches and tools to make ext2 and the Linux kernel work with EAs and
> ACLs.
>
> Does XFS need these patches? Or does XFS implement ACLs on its own, with
> its own tools and such? Does XFS support EAs?

XFS does not need these patches. Indeed, a system with these patches 
mixed with  XFS will probably not work very well. Hopefully, these 2 
implementations will converge in the near future. If you are going to 
try XFS, use the tools available from the SGI XFS site. It has it's own 
tools to manage both ACLs  & EAs.
> In line with ACLs, where can I read up on how XFS implements them? In
> particular I'd like to find out about how default ACLs and inheritance are
> implemented in XFS.

The XFS ACL implementation is well documented in both the XFS man pages. 
Default ACLs & inheritance closely follow the posix 'standard', so that 
would be a good read also.

> Please be patient, and if this has been answered before or has an answer
> somewhere on the XFS website, please help me out with some URLs.

A link to the posix 'standards' can be found through links at Andrea's 
bestbits site. I am writing this on my PDA & so do not have immeadiate 
access to get the exact URLs for you. Poking around the bestbits site 
should reveal the link though.

There have been some recent patches to both XFS  & Samba 2.2 to further 
refine both the ACL implementation & the operation with Samba. When you 
get to the point of implementing XFS & Samba, send me another e-mail & I 
will fill you in on the particulars.