I am thinking of implementing Solaris-style alternative data streams in the ZFSOnLinux driver via an ioctl and writing a compatibility shim so that software written to use O_XATTR can be trivially adapted to use the interface. I sketched out the fine details on github: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/4437 I would be much happier if the VFS gave filesystem drivers the ability to implement O_XATTR. That would avoid the need to (ab)use an ioctl for this and eliminate the risk of using a bit that would be defined to mean something else. The former risks permissions checks becoming stale while the latter is a situation that I would be happy to avoid. Since this sort of interface is applicable to NFS too, I wanted to ask what various mainline developers think about it before I tried doing an initial implementation.
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