[openbeos] Re: FS attributes

  • From: Jeremy Powers <jpowers@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2002 14:39:01 -0800

Manuel Jesus Petit de Gabriel wrote:

<snip>

They don't show in explorer because, i insist, they are not files;
"filename:something" is an attribute of filename. As for the file
size, unfortunately only the size of the default Data stream is
displayed.
</snip>


This is one thing that has bugged me about BeOS (I won't get started on Windows...). How hard is it to make the reported file size include the size of all attributes? Either by adding up the sizes when needed, or having another attribute to store the total size. I know that in NT you can store all the data in an attribute, and essentially hide it from anyone who doesn't know it's there.. this technique was used on my school's server to hide warez. This seems horribly broken to me. The size of the file should be the size of the entire file, not just the 'data' attribute.

This brings me around to another thought/complaint. How neccesary is it to rely

the main data attribute? (yes, it's essential for non-attribute file systems, but we are talking about BeOS here) If the OS has full support for file attributes, including proper handling of attribute sizes, reporting of what makes up each file, etc, then lots of fun things can be done with file storage. The FS as a database comes to mind... although I know the true FS==DB was abandoned in the past, proper handling of attributes would make such a thing trivial. Make each file a 'row' in the db, with every column an attribute. Queries in the database become file system queries on attributes. Possible with the current implimentation, but regardless of how much information is there, it is always vastly underreported.

How neccesary for FS implimentation is the reliance on one main data stream?

Jer


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