I'm trying to work out whether or not, or rather to what extend, xattrs are supported in FreeBSD using ZFS. I've read some conflicting information.
If it matters, this is a very fresh FreeBSD 10.2 install I just set up, with ZFS set up by the installer.
This is a re-post on a question I previously posted on the Unix & Linux Stack Exchange. So far there was no answer, so I hope for someone more knowledgeable here. If you have an account there as well, feel free to offer an answer there in addition to a reply here.
zfs get xattr
lists it as on (default) for /, /usr and /var, but as off (temporary) for all other datasets, including children of those mentioned above.- Running
zfs set xattr=on zroot/usr/home
I get the message
“property 'xattr' not supported on FreeBSD: permission denied.” - This agrees with the zfs man page:
“The xattr property is currently not supported on FreeBSD.” setextattr
,getextattr
andlsextattr
seem to work well enough.- I also managed to save and restore a device file node using
rsync --fake-super
, and could see its data usinglsextattr
andgetextattr
. - Wikipedia has some discussion in the xattr talk page. Apparently there once was a claim that ZFS supports xattr since FreeBSD 8, but that was removed later on, with reference to the manpage (see 3.).
rsync --fake-super
running on such a machine. I'd rather not lose all my metadata due to known xattr problems.If it matters, this is a very fresh FreeBSD 10.2 install I just set up, with ZFS set up by the installer.
This is a re-post on a question I previously posted on the Unix & Linux Stack Exchange. So far there was no answer, so I hope for someone more knowledgeable here. If you have an account there as well, feel free to offer an answer there in addition to a reply here.