On 2015-02-02 13:47, Mimi Zohar wrote:
> On Mon, 2015-02-02 at 18:08 +0000, Serge Hallyn wrote:
>> Quoting Casey Schaufler (casey@schaufler-ca.com):
>>> I'm game to participate in such an effort. The POSIX scheme
>>> is workable, but given that it's 20 years old and hasn't
>>> developed real traction it's hard to call it successful.
>>
>> Over the years we've several times discussed possible reasons for this
>> and how to help.  I personally think it's two things:  1. lack of
>> toolchain and fs support.  The fact that we cannot to this day enable
>> ping using capabilities by default because of cpio, tar and non-xattr
>> filesystems is disheartening.
>
> We're working on resolving the CPIO issue.  tar currently supports
> xattrs.  At this point, how many non-xattr filesystems are there really?
>

FAT*, and UFS immediately come to mind, and I know of people who use UFS 
for their root filesystem.  There are a handful (ext* included) that 
need an option turned on in the kernel config, and possibly also a mount 
option added.

IIRC, the Linux NFS client has no xattr support, and that is very widely 
used because it's easier to set up than any alternatives.