Ubuntu

Will NFS have ACL support in 8.04?

Asked by Axel Pospischil

I know that this was posted similar before in question #3324, but for Ubuntu 6.10 LTS.

I have to make the decision switching from "suse" to "ubuntu" on a production system with multiple pc's and shared nfs directories with sensible data. ACL's over NFS are mandatory. The only problem with ubuntu is the lacking acl support with NFS. With SuSE it is no problem at all - all directories are mounted accordingly by default and the nfs-server package is ready to go. Please take into accout, that I donnot (!) want to exchange nfs with samba!

The problem I see for the future: As even gutsy has no "acl/nfs" support, so it is not well tested! And I cannot estimate, if it will find a way into the 8.04 (server) kernel. Compiling my own kernel on server and client (!) with enabled acl might work - in any case it is not supported. The latter is a real show stopper for "ubuntu linux" environments in "real life".

That's why I am definitely (!) looking for an answer.
This will significantly force my decisions in recommending to use ubuntu over redhat/suse in production systems that need nfs/acl.

Will ACL over NFS be supported in 8.04 LTS or not?

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Pedro Fragoso (ember) said : 		#1

Well i that a difficult question, but in my opinion you can do a report on Ubuntu Bugs to a Wishlist for further request.

I was reading this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=428512&highlight=acl+nfs so it's quite unlikely to have ACL over NFS.

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Axel Pospischil (apos) said : 		#2

Thanks for the answer Pedro. I read through this article by myself and made a lot of additional research in this case. Probably we have to wait until "nfs4" becomes commonly used. On the other side I don't see any effort beeing made on ubuntu's side addressing the usage of acl's in server environment in any case.

After additionally searching for a solution I finally tried with samba. Same here - the kernel does not support ACL for samba/cifs: "# CONFIG_CIFS_XATTR is not set" (on both desktop and server kernel). No problem with suse/redhat. Works out of the box.

So I am on the end with considering ubuntu for that particular environment - even this is my favorite system for private usage. I am looking forward for spending a saturday updating a whole bunch of suse machines - which will definitely take longer than setting up each of them new (!) in ubuntu.

But the question remains:
Will ACL over NFS be supported in 8.04 LTS or not?
And what is ubuntu's official politic in this case?

I am posting a bug report: Bug #173267

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Pedro Fragoso (ember) said : 		#3

About CONFIG_CIFS_XATTR you can still customize your kernel.
htps://help.ubuntu.com/community/Kernel/Compile

About ACL over NFS just wait for some comments on your bug perhaps it could make it to Wishlist on Hardy.

Good luck.

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Axel Pospischil (apos) said : 		#4

Thanks for the answer. I know about compiling the kernel solves my problem. But that's not the point: a supported ubuntu should not require to recompile a kernel.
We will see what the discussion on the reported Bug #173267 will bring.

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Axel Pospischil (apos) said : 		#5

Even tried NFSv4 howto: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NFSv4Howto
No Luck.