Comment 68 for bug 344878

Andrew M,

As to whether this breaks backups that will depend on how you do them.

If you backup to a file system that doesn't support extended attributes and you don't stuff the files in an archive (tar etc) with xattr preserving options set then, yes the backed up files will lose there long names. The files will will still be accessible, but you will need to use the short place holder name that is used when the long name can not be found. This can break some applications as they will only know to look for files using the long file name, however if the name is known the file can be restored by renaming it.

I have been experimenting with an alternative scheme where the long name information is stored in the encrypted file header instead of a xattr. This scheme will work for filesystems that don't support xattrs, but it won't allow for long names on directories, sysmlinks, etc.