Changing fstab options

Question

What happens when file-system options in fstab are changed?

Speaking of an already populated file-system, would changing options in fstab cause issues?

For example, if one were to enable or disable either ACLs or Extended Attributes, what would happen? Say that a file-system used ACLs before and not Extended Attributes and I would change the mounting options to the reverse (disable ACLs and enable Extended Attributes) would this break anything? If so, is there a way to make the filesystem in a consistent state with the new fstab options?

Answer 1

Changing options in fstab does not itself change the filesystem in anyway. It only changes how the kernel exposes the filesystem to userspace. In your example, nothing would break; acls and xattrs are independent.