# Re: \[PATCH 2/2\] afs: Add metadata xattrs

- From: David Howells \<dhowells@redhat.com\>
- Date: 2017-07-06 16:14:11 
- List: linux-api
- Page: https://ratatoskr.run/linux-api/2017/07/124404
- Thread: https://ratatoskr.run/linux-fsdevel/2017/07/124036/t.md

```text
Christoph Hellwig [ref] wrote:

> NAK.  Don't overload xattrs with magic behavior just to avoid the need
> to do proper syscalls or ioctls.

How?  This has to work on non-files, files you can't open and mountpoints.
You can't do an ioctl() on a file opened O_PATH:

	if (unlikely(f->f_flags & O_PATH)) {
		f->f_mode = FMODE_PATH;
		f->f_op = &empty_fops;
		return 0;
	}

and you can't specify AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT or AT_NO_FOLLOW to openat(), so ioctl()
is of no use here.

Do you advocate introducing a pioctl() call?  Linus was dead-set against that
as I recall.

I could invent a bunch of AFS-specific syscalls, but I'd rather not do that or
I suppose bring my fsinfo() patches up to scratch - but you didn't like those
either.

Note that using xattrs for fs info is not without precedent in Linux - cifs,
for example.

David
```