Re: extended attributes

[Eric Haszlakiewicz <erh%nimenees.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 07:20:58AM +0000, Emmanuel Dreyfus wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 09, 2011 at 01:33:46PM -0400, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > I don't love having an option for this.  Is there a space or performance
> > issue with making it (or extended attribute support in general!) the
> > default?
> 
> I potential problem: extended attribute autostart on the root filesystem
> with a corrupted filesystem easily leads to a panic at mount time. This
> cannot be recovered through single user mode. I suggest that if we make

eh?  Don't corrupted filesystems cause a panic anyway?  What is it about
extended attributes that makes this more likely?

Is this a jumping-though-a-NULL-pointer panic, or a "oops, something is
inconsistent with ext. attrs. so I'll call panic()" panic?  If it's the
second, can the extended attributes be turned off at that point?

eric