extended attributes

[Tony Nelson]

At 9:39 PM +1000 5/4/06, Russell Strong wrote:
>Aaron Konstam wrote:
>> On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 20:23 +1000, Russell Strong wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I've found that when I edit a file with vi or gedit I lose all of the
>>> user extended attributes associated with that file.  A stat reveals that
>>> the inode number has changed.  Is this the reason why I'm losing the
>>> extended attributes?  Is vi and gedit creating a new file?  Is it easy
>>> to change this behaviour?
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>> Russell
>>>
>> I don't know for sure but that makes sense to me. When vi is used, at
>> least, a temporary copy of the file is created to be edited. It would
>> not surprise me that when you save the file a new file with a new inode
>> is created.
>>
>I don't know much about selinux, but doesn't that also use extended
>attributes.  I've tried writing a file with a unique selinux label,
>verified using stat that the inode number changed, however it kept it's
>selinux extended attributes.  Am I wrong about selinux?

SELinux does use EAs.  There is much magic in SELinux, including default
labeling for new files.  Try changing the context from the default and then
editing.  I did it as root with chcon, changing a user_u to root, verifying
with "ll -Z", and then editing with gedit; the default of user_u was set
again afterward.  Using cream, a gui for vim, did not change the context.
ISTR that vim copies back into the original file.
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