summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/doc/legacy/mac-related-xattrs.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/legacy/mac-related-xattrs.txt')
-rw-r--r--doc/legacy/mac-related-xattrs.txt21
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/legacy/mac-related-xattrs.txt b/doc/legacy/mac-related-xattrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..92bb2ceef2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/legacy/mac-related-xattrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+
+This document is intended to briefly explain how the Extended Attributes on
+Darwin 10.5.x releases works
+----
+
+On Darwin other than all the normal filesystem operations, 'Finder' (like
+Explorer in Windows but a little more) keeps its information in two extended
+attributes named 'com.apple.FinderInfo' and 'com.apple.ResourceFork'. If these
+xattrs are not implemented the filesystem won't be shown on Finder, and if they
+are not implemented properly there may be issues when some of the file operations
+are done through GUI of Finder. But when a filesystem is used over mountpoint in a
+terminal, everything is fine and these xattrs are not required.
+
+Currently the way these xattrs are implemented is simple. All the xattr calls
+(getxattr, setxattr, listxattr, removexattr) are passed down to underlaying filesystem,
+most of the cases when exported FS is on MacOS X itself, these keys are supported, hence
+the fops succeed. But in the case of using exports of different OS on Darwin the issue is
+extended attribute prefix like 'com.apple.' may not be supported, hence the problem with
+Finder. To solve this issue, GlusterFS returns virtual default values to these keys, which
+works fine on most of the cases.
+