[Cluster-devel] GFS2: Add explanation of extended attr on-disk format

[Steven Whitehouse]

>From b6ed2e03df1e2c6ee41cf0e2e2699f2410671916 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho at redhat.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:44:04 +0100
Subject: GFS2: Add explanation of extended attr on-disk format

Some useful info regarding the on-disk representation of
GFS2 extended attributes.

Signed-off-by: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho at redhat.com>
---
 include/linux/gfs2_ondisk.h |   22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 22 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/gfs2_ondisk.h b/include/linux/gfs2_ondisk.h
index c56b4bc..b80c88d 100644
--- a/include/linux/gfs2_ondisk.h
+++ b/include/linux/gfs2_ondisk.h
@@ -333,6 +333,28 @@ struct gfs2_leaf {
 
 /*
  * Extended attribute header format
+ *
+ * This works in a similar way to dirents. There is a fixed size header
+ * followed by a variable length section made up of the name and the
+ * associated data. In the case of a "stuffed" entry, the value is
+ * inline directly after the name, the ea_num_ptrs entry will be
+ * zero in that case. For non-"stuffed" entries, there will be
+ * a set of pointers (aligned to 8 byte boundary) to the block(s)
+ * containing the value.
+ *
+ * The blocks containing the values and the blocks containing the
+ * extended attribute headers themselves all start with the common
+ * metadata header. Each inode, if it has extended attributes, will
+ * have either a single block containing the extended attribute headers
+ * or a single indirect block pointing to blocks containing the
+ * extended attribure headers.
+ *
+ * The maximim size of the data part of an extended attribute is 64k
+ * so the number of blocks required depends upon block size. Since the
+ * block size also determines the number of pointers in an indirect
+ * block, its a fairly complicated calculation to work out the maximum
+ * number of blocks that an inode may have relating to extended attributes.
+ *
  */
 
 #define GFS2_EA_MAX_NAME_LEN	255
-- 
1.6.2.5