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authorNathan Scott <nathans@sgi.com>2002-02-25 22:10:22 +0000
committerNathan Scott <nathans@sgi.com>2002-02-25 22:10:22 +0000
commitc82edc1013cf28a096cb8f5ba21c28d3e9312227 (patch)
tree5a2c12886725666beddf1aaf8cdf20e474359ebc /man/man5
parenta87485aca58ea2236b31b0c0b8e438b3d967709b (diff)
downloadattr-c82edc1013cf28a096cb8f5ba21c28d3e9312227.tar.gz
Merge of xfs-cmds-2.4.18:slinx:111138a by nathans.
bump to version 2.0.0 for extended attribute and other interface changes. incorporate new code, docs, etc from ext2/ext3 project.
Diffstat (limited to 'man/man5')
-rw-r--r--man/man5/Makefile48
-rw-r--r--man/man5/attr.5110
2 files changed, 158 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/man/man5/Makefile b/man/man5/Makefile
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+++ b/man/man5/Makefile
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+#
+# Copyright (c) 2000 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
+#
+# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+# under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License as
+# published by the Free Software Foundation.
+#
+# This program is distributed in the hope that it would be useful, but
+# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+#
+# Further, this software is distributed without any warranty that it is
+# free of the rightful claim of any third person regarding infringement
+# or the like. Any license provided herein, whether implied or
+# otherwise, applies only to this software file. Patent licenses, if
+# any, provided herein do not apply to combinations of this program with
+# other software, or any other product whatsoever.
+#
+# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
+# with this program; if not, write the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
+# Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston MA 02111-1307, USA.
+#
+# Contact information: Silicon Graphics, Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy,
+# Mountain View, CA 94043, or:
+#
+# http://www.sgi.com
+#
+# For further information regarding this notice, see:
+#
+# http://oss.sgi.com/projects/GenInfo/SGIGPLNoticeExplan/
+#
+
+TOPDIR = ../..
+include $(TOPDIR)/include/builddefs
+
+MAN_SECTION = 5
+
+MAN_PAGES = $(shell echo *.$(MAN_SECTION))
+MAN_DEST = $(PKG_MAN_DIR)/man$(MAN_SECTION)
+LSRCFILES = $(MAN_PAGES)
+
+default install : $(MAN_PAGES)
+
+include $(BUILDRULES)
+
+install-dev : default
+ $(INSTALL) -m 755 -d $(MAN_DEST)
+ $(INSTALL_MAN)
diff --git a/man/man5/attr.5 b/man/man5/attr.5
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+.\"
+.\" Extended attributes manual page
+.\"
+.\" (C) Andreas Gruenbacher, 2000
+.\" (C) Silicon Graphics Inc, 2001
+.\"
+.TH ATTR 5
+.SH NAME
+Extended attributes
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+Extended attributes are name:value pairs associated permanently with
+files and directories, similar to the environment strings associated
+with a process.
+An attribute may be defined or undefined.
+If it is defined, its value may be empty or non-empty.
+.PP
+Extended attributes are extensions to the normal attributes which are
+associated with all inodes in the system (i.e. the
+.BR stat (2)
+data).
+They are often used to provide additional functionality
+to a filesystem \- for example, additional security features such as
+Access Control Lists (ACLs) may be implemented using extended attributes.
+.PP
+Users with search access to a file or directory may retrieve a list of
+attribute names defined for that file or directory.
+.PP
+Extended attributes are accessed as atomic objects.
+Reading retrieves the whole value of an attribute and stores it in a buffer.
+Writing replaces any previous value with the new value.
+.PP
+Currently, support for extended attributes is implemented on Linux by
+the ext2, ext3 and XFS filesystem patches, which can be downloaded from
+.B http://acl.bestbits.at/
+and
+.B http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/
+respectively.
+.SH EXTENDED ATTRIBUTE NAMESPACES
+Attribute names are zero-terminated strings and typically have a short
+(filesystem dependent) length.
+The attribute name is always specified in the full
+.IR namespace.attribute
+form, eg.
+.I user.mime_type
+or
+.IR system.posix_acl_access .
+.PP
+The namespace mechanism is used to define different classes of extended
+attributes.
+These different classes exist for several reasons, e.g. the permissions
+and capabilities required for manipulating extended attributes of one
+namespace may differ to another.
+They have also been used to distinguish filesystem-specific attribute
+names from canonical, filesystem-independent attribute names.
+.PP
+The extended attribute namespace is always specified as the first
+component of the name.
+This greatly simplifies certain operations, and provides a consistent,
+explicit interface for all operations.
+.PP
+Extended
+.I user
+attributes may be assigned to files and directories for storing arbitrary
+additional information such as the mime type, character set or encoding
+of a file.
+User attributes are subject to the same permissions as the contents of a file.
+The file owner can decide who is allowed to read and/or set these attributes.
+.PP
+Extended
+.I system
+attributes are used by the kernel to store system objects such as
+Access Control Lists and Capabilities.
+Read and write access permissions to system attributes
+depend on the policy implemented for each system attribute implemented
+in the kernel.
+.PP
+Additional types of extended attributes with different access permissions,
+such as attributes that are accessible only to processes trusted by the
+kernel, may be added in the future.
+.SH FILESYSTEM DIFFERENCES
+The kernel and the filesystem may place limits on the maximum number
+and size of extended attributes that can be associated with a file.
+.PP
+In the current ext2 and ext3 filesystem implementations, all extended
+attributes must fit on a single filesystem block (1024, 2048 or 4096 bytes,
+depending on the block size specified when the filesystem
+was created). This limit may be removed in a future version.
+Device special files cannot be associated with extended user attributes
+(but they may be associated with extended system attributes). Permissions
+of device special files define access to the devices rather than to the
+device special files.
+.PP
+In the XFS filesystem implementation, there is no practical limit on the
+number of extended attributes associated with a file, and the algorithms
+used to store extended attribute information on disk are scalable (stored
+either inline in the inode, as an extent, or in a B+ tree).
+XFS allows extended attributes to be associated with device inodes.
+.SH ADDITIONAL NOTES
+Since the filesystems on which extended attributes are stored might also
+be used on architectures with a different byte order and machine word
+size, care should be taken to store attribute values in an architecture
+independent format.
+.SH AUTHORS
+Andreas Gruenbacher,
+.RI < a.gruenbacher@computer.org >
+and the SGI XFS development team,
+.RI < linux-xfs@oss.sgi.com >.
+.SH SEE ALSO
+getfattr(1),
+setfattr(1).