Re: RFC: Solaris style extended attributes for FreeBSD

On Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 11:36 AM Alexander Motin <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi Rick,
>
> On 25.03.2025 16:53, Rick Macklem wrote:
> > 3 - A lot of the changes need to go into OpenZFS and I have no idea what
> >       their position will be? (Most of the changes are in the os/freebsd/zfs
> >       source subtree, which may make it easier?)
>
> I haven't looked on the patches yet, and I may not speak for the whole
> OpenZFS project, but I'd put emphasis on a cross-OS compatibility of the
> implementation, including the properties, namespace prefixes for
> different APIs, etc.
>
> Since the directory-style attributes are growing from Solaris, it would
> be nice if whatever API and on-disk format chosen would be compatible
> with it. Even though the merge traffic with Illumos is not that big
> lately and they are formally not a part of OpenZFS, but would be nice to
> not break the ties if possible.  It might require some code archeology
> to understand the evolution of compatibility issues we have now.
>
> FreeBSD and Linux are equally important targets in OpenZFS now, and
> while some things might be difficult to implement on all platforms, for
> example Linux kernel does not support NFSv4-style ACLs, whatever design
> chosen should allow such perspective, even if not implemented
> immediately.  So I am a little worried about "Most of the changes are in
> the os/freebsd/zfs source subtree".  We don't want it to get implemented
> differently in Linux one day and become impossible to move pools between
> OS'es.  We already have issues there, so would be good to not grow them.
>
> While formally not a part of OpenZFS tree (yet?), there are forks for
> Windows and MacOS.  It would be cool to understand at least basic
> requirements of those systems.
All I've found out w.r.t. Mac OSX is that their NFSv4 client can use
named attributes (with a specific mount option setting). Unfortunately
I don't have a Mac.

I am going to try and install Solaris in a bhyve instance. Oracle does
allow freebie Solaris licenses for educational purposes, but I'm not
sure if I can figure out how to install it in bhyve?

Thanks everyone for comments sofar and don't hesitate to comment
further. The comments have been useful, rick

>
> Don't get me wrong.  I'd be really happy to see it done at least from
> the perspective of its being implemented for Solaris decades ago, and
> considering limitations other systems including FreeBSD have.  It just
> might be a bit tangled after the years.
>
> --
> Alexander Motin