Re: Use of extended attributes has issues.

[Joe Shaw <joeshaw novell com>]

On Thu, 2005-05-19 at 17:13 -0400, Nat Friedman wrote:
> Whenever I try to copy a Beagle-indexed file onto a filesystem which
> does not support EAs (for example, a memory stick), horrible,
> frightening things happen.
> 
> At the command line, I get this kind of nonsense:
> 
>         [nat linux Desktop]$ cp
>         NovellCongres.nl.keynote.odp /media/USB_DISK/
>         cp: setting attribute `user.Beagle.Uid' for
>         `/media/USB_DISK/NovellCongres.nl.keynote.odp': Operation not
>         supported

I don't think this is an issue.  I would prefer to see these things,
because it means that the filesystem I am copying to doesn't support
EAs.  And if I am copying around files with cp, that's probably
important info to me.  It probably doesn't need to do it once for each
EA though.

>         cp: setting attribute `user.Beagle.Fingerprint' for
>         `/media/USB_DISK/NovellCongres.nl.keynote.odp': Operation not
>         supported
>         [nat linux Desktop]$
> 
> It is not even clear to me if the file copied (it did).

Exit code aside, how do you ever know if cp sucessfully copied?  I don't
really think we should be arguing the usability of cp. :)

> In Nautilus, I get a dialog box telling me that the copy failed because
> "There is not enough space on the destination."  And the copy does fail.

This happens to me for all files on SUSE 9.3 using subfs, unless I
explicitly remount it as vfat, regardless of whether it has EAs or not.

(When I remount it as vfat and copy a file with EAs, it copies without
warning.)

This appears to be a bug in subfs or gnome-vfs' interaction with it, and
not related to Beagle.

Joe