summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/eainode.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/ext4/eainode.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/filesystems/ext4/eainode.rst18
1 files changed, 18 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/eainode.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/eainode.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7a2ef26b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/ext4/eainode.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+Large Extended Attribute Values
+-------------------------------
+
+To enable ext4 to store extended attribute values that do not fit in the
+inode or in the single extended attribute block attached to an inode,
+the EA_INODE feature allows us to store the value in the data blocks of
+a regular file inode. This “EA inode” is linked only from the extended
+attribute name index and must not appear in a directory entry. The
+inode's i_atime field is used to store a checksum of the xattr value;
+and i_ctime/i_version store a 64-bit reference count, which enables
+sharing of large xattr values between multiple owning inodes. For
+backward compatibility with older versions of this feature, the
+i_mtime/i_generation *may* store a back-reference to the inode number
+and i_generation of the **one** owning inode (in cases where the EA
+inode is not referenced by multiple inodes) to verify that the EA inode
+is the correct one being accessed.