On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 06:49:34PM -0700, Tahsin Erdogan wrote:

Ext4 now supports xattr values that are up to 64k in size (vfs limit).
Large xattr values are stored in external inodes each one holding a
single value. Once written the data blocks of these inodes are immutable.

The real world use cases are expected to have a lot of value duplication
such as inherited acls etc. To reduce data duplication on disk, this patch
implements a deduplicator that allows sharing of xattr inodes.

The deduplication is based on an in-memory hash lookup that is a best
effort sharing scheme. When a xattr inode is read from disk (i.e.
getxattr() call), its crc32c hash is added to a hash table. Before
creating a new xattr inode for a value being set, the hash table is
checked to see if an existing inode holds an identical value. If such an
inode is found, the ref count on that inode is incremented. On value
removal the ref count is decremented and if it reaches zero the inode is
deleted.

The quota charging for such inodes is manually managed. Every reference
holder is charged the full size as if there was no sharing happening.
This is consistent with how xattr blocks are also charged.

Signed-off-by: Tahsin Erdogan <redacted>

Applied, thanks

				- Ted