The ext3 root inode was treated specially with respect to in-inode extended attributes, for reasons detailed in the removed comment below. The first mkfs-created inodes would not get extra_i_size or the EXT3_STATE_XATTR flag set in ext3_read_inode, which disallowed reading or setting in-inode EAs on the root. However, in ext4, ext4_mark_inode_dirty calls ext4_expand_extra_isize for all inodes; once this is done EAs may be placed in the root ext4 inode body. But for reasons above, it won't be found after a reboot. testcase: setfattr -n user.name -v value mntpt/ setfattr -n user.name2 -v value2 mntpt/ umount mntpt/; remount mntpt/ getfattr -d mntpt/ name2/value2 has gone missing; debugfs shows it in the inode body, but it is not found there by getattr. The following fixes it up; newer mkfs appears to properly zero the inodes, so this workaround isn't needed for ext4. Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen <sandeen@xxxxxxxxxx> --- Index: linux-2.6.24-rc6-mm1/fs/ext4/inode.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.24-rc6-mm1.orig/fs/ext4/inode.c +++ linux-2.6.24-rc6-mm1/fs/ext4/inode.c @@ -2750,13 +2750,7 @@ void ext4_read_inode(struct inode * inod ei->i_data[block] = raw_inode->i_block[block]; INIT_LIST_HEAD(&ei->i_orphan); - if (inode->i_ino >= EXT4_FIRST_INO(inode->i_sb) + 1 && - EXT4_INODE_SIZE(inode->i_sb) > EXT4_GOOD_OLD_INODE_SIZE) { - /* - * When mke2fs creates big inodes it does not zero out - * the unused bytes above EXT4_GOOD_OLD_INODE_SIZE, - * so ignore those first few inodes. - */ + if (EXT4_INODE_SIZE(inode->i_sb) > EXT4_GOOD_OLD_INODE_SIZE) { ei->i_extra_isize = le16_to_cpu(raw_inode->i_extra_isize); if (EXT4_GOOD_OLD_INODE_SIZE + ei->i_extra_isize > EXT4_INODE_SIZE(inode->i_sb)) { - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html