2.8. Large Extended Attribute Values

To enable ext4 to store extended attribute values that do not fit in the inode or in the single extended attribute block attached to an inode, the EA_INODE feature allows us to store the value in the data blocks of a regular file inode. This “EA inode” is linked only from the extended attribute name index and must not appear in a directory entry. The inode’s i_atime field is used to store a checksum of the xattr value; and i_ctime/i_version store a 64-bit reference count, which enables sharing of large xattr values between multiple owning inodes. For backward compatibility with older versions of this feature, the i_mtime/i_generation may store a back-reference to the inode number and i_generation of the one owning inode (in cases where the EA inode is not referenced by multiple inodes) to verify that the EA inode is the correct one being accessed.