So, it turns out I’m implementing syncing of ownership. This will be implemented similarly to the xattr proposal I posted a while back, and is in fact a pre-requisite for that work. I’m aware that it’s a rabbit hole and many people will want different things, but I’m scoping it fairly tightly to begin with:
- Syncing file ownership and group for POSIX systems
- Syncing file ownership for Windows systems
- Based on name or ID in priority, that is, if a file is owned by jb/501 on device A and there exists a user jb/1000 on device B, the ownership will sync jb → jb. If doesn’t exist on the destination the ownership will be UID 501 (as on the source).
Of course Windows is a bit different (names can include domains, the ID is a SID, etc.), but the APIs are there and it makes sense. What strikes me though when looking at it, is is it useful?
I mean, on Unixes the ownership and group are central to the file permissions. On Windows that’s not really the case, as far as I understand the only thing a file owner is good for is the ability to set ACLs under all circumstances.
So given that we still don’t sync Windows ACLs (or, until we do), is there really any driver or use case that requires syncing owners on Windows at all? Does anyone want this?
(Note that this is different from mapping, i.e. syncing KASTELO\Jakob Borg on some system to jb on another, which I’m not looking at for the moment.)
5 posts - 5 participants