Reiserfs question

[Stephen Smalley]

On Fri, 2004-10-29 at 13:53, Dan Hollis wrote:
> Wrong, reiserfs XATTRs were added in 2002.
> 
> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=reiserfs&m=103765962910834&w=2
> 
> If you will check the config options for 2.6.8.1 youll see
> CONFIG_REISERFS_FS_XATTR ...

xattr support for reiserfs was only added to the mainline Linux kernel
very recently, and only over the objections of Hans Reiser to any new
features in reiserfs (version 3).  Russell's statement is correct.  See
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=reiserfs&m=108299878822391&w=2. 
reiserfs xattr support was maintained as a separate patch by SuSE for a
long time, but that does not mean that Hans has ever supported them or
that the mainline kernel supported them until very recently.

> If selinux cant run on reiserfs, its not because its missing XATTRs, 
> because theyre not missing.

While xattr support does now exist for reiserfs in the mainline kernel,
there are problems in using it for SELinux; implementing the xattrs as
regular files leads to deadlock when SELinux and reiserfs interact
during xattr setup.  Those problems have been reported to the reiserfs
maintainers for some time, along with proposed patches to address the
issues, but they have failed to act on them to date.

-- 
Stephen Smalley <sds at epoch.ncsc.mil>
National Security Agency