extended attributes & fstab

[Lee Braiden]

On Thursday 03 November 2005 23:49, Chris Peterman wrote:
> What do Extended Attrs do aside from let Beagle do its magic?

Lots of things.  They let you associate arbitrary data with files.  Generally, 
that will be used for file metadata, which means the sort of stuff that's in 
the ID3 tags of music files: performer, music genre, release date, etc.  But 
there's no reason you couldn't use EAs to hold any data you want, like 
passwords or URLs of cracking programs, or anything else a hacker might want 
to put on a computer, but not have the actual users of the computer notice.

Also, EAs are fairly associated with ACLs.  If/when one becomes a default 
feature, then the other may become default too.  ACLs specifically allow or 
deny access to files, but GNOME and KDE don't yet show that extra security 
information yet, AFAIK.  So you could have a situation where a file looks 
like it's safe, from the desktop, but a hacker can make holes that the 
computer's users can't see.

Don't get me wrong: I think both EAs and ACLs *should* be default -- they're 
really great features, that I've seen working great on other OS's.  But GNOME 
and KDE really need to get support for them soon :(

-- 
Lee Braiden
http://www.DigitalUnleashed.com