Andreas Dilger [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

	__u32	st_win_attrs;

It seems some of these flags are duplicated with the st_information field,
and some are duplicate with FS_IOC_GETFLAGS values, and returning the same
information in multiple ways is confusing.

If these flags are part of the CIFS protocol,

They're part of the Windows API.  CIFS/SMB and NTFS have them at the same
values.

and are directly usable by Samba then I can understand we wouldn't want to
change them once in the kernel and then convert them back in userspace, but
I'm a bit reluctant to have flags only for CIFS/NTFS/FAT that might also be
useful for other filesystems.

Where said "other filesystems" have some support for Windows or OS/2 and have
bits defined that map directly in semantics, if not in value, to these bits.

JFS, for example, has IREADONLY, IHIDDEN, ISYSTEM, IDIRECTORY, IARCHIVE and
ISPARSE.

Would we want to be able to get translated
st_win_attrs flags in ext4 attrs when it is being exported by Samba?

Actually, I was thinking of proposing an ext4 patch that stored windows flags
in a separate word in the inode on disk.  There isn't sufficient bit space to
map all the windows flags to FS_IOC_GETFLAGS.  However, as you say, there is a
certain amount of overlap...

David