Ubuntu Manpage: setfattr - set extended attributes of filesystem objects

NAME

       setfattr - set extended attributes of filesystem objects

SYNOPSIS

       setfattr [-h] -n name [-v value] pathname...
       setfattr [-h] -x name pathname...
       setfattr [-h] --restore=file

DESCRIPTION

       The  setfattr  command  associates  a  new  value with an extended attribute name for each
       specified file.

OPTIONS

-n name, --name=name
Specifies the name of the extended attribute to set.

-v value, --value=value
Specifies the new value of the extended attribute. There are three methods available
for encoding the value. If the given string is enclosed in double quotes, the inner
string is treated as text. In that case, backslashes and double quotes have special
meanings and need to be escaped by a preceding backslash. Any control characters can
be encoded as a backslash followed by three digits as its ASCII code in octal. If the
given string begins with 0x or 0X, it expresses a hexadecimal number. If the given
string begins with 0s or 0S, base64 encoding is expected. Also see the --encoding
option of getfattr(1).

-x name, --remove=name
Remove the named extended attribute entirely.

-h, --no-dereference
Do not follow symlinks. If pathname is a symbolic link, it is not followed, but is
instead itself the inode being modified.

--restore=file
Restores extended attributes from file. The file must be in the format generated by
the getfattr command with the --dump option. If a dash (-) is given as the file name,
setfattr reads from standard input.

--raw
Do not decode the attribute value. Can be used to set values obtained with getfattr
--only-values.

--version
Print the version of setfattr and exit.

--help
Print help explaining the command line options.

-- End of command line options. All remaining parameters are interpreted as file names,
even if they start with a dash character.

EXAMPLES

       Add extended attribute to user namespace:

       $ setfattr -n user.foo -v bar file.txt

       To add md5sum of the file as an extended attribute:

       # setfattr -n trusted.md5sum -v d41d8cd98f00b204e00998ecf8427e file.txt

AUTHOR