NAME

       metastore - stores and restores filesystem metadata

SYNOPSIS

       metastore ACTION [OPTION...] [PATH...]

DESCRIPTION

       Stores or restores metadata (owner, group, permissions, xattrs and optionally mtime) for a
       filesystem tree. This can be used to preserve the  metadata  in  situations  where  it  is
       usually not stored (git and tar for example) or as a tripwire like mechanism to detect any
       changes to metadata. Note that e.g.  SELinux stores its labels in xattrs so care should be
       taken when applying stored metadata to make sure that system security is not compromised.

ACTIONS

       -c, --compare
              Shows the difference between the stored and real metadata.

       -s, --save
              Saves  the  current  metadata  to  ./.metadata or to the specified file (see --file
              option below).

       -a, --apply
              Attempts to apply the stored metadata to the file system.

       -h, --help
              Prints a help message and exits.

OPTIONS

       -v, --verbose
              Causes metastore to print more verbose messages. Can be repeated more than once for
              even more verbosity.

       -q, --quiet
              Causes metastore to print less verbose messages. Can be repeated more than once for
              even less verbosity.

       -m, --mtime
              Causes metastore to also take mtime into account for the compare or apply actions.

       -e, --empty-dirs
              Also attempts to recreate missing empty directories.  May  be  useful  where  empty
              directories  are  not tracked (e.g. by git or cvs).  Only works in combination with
              the apply option.  This is currently an experimental feature.

       -f <file>, --file <file>
              Causes the metadata  to  be  saved,  read  from  the  specified  file  rather  than
              ./.metadata.

PATHS

       If  no  path  is  specified, metastore will use the current directory as the basis for the
       actions. This is the recommended way of executing metastore.  Alternatively, one  or  more
       paths  can  be  specified and they will each be examined. Later invocations should be made
       using the exact same paths to ensure that the stored metadata is interpreted correctly.

AUTHOR

       Written by David Härdeman <david@hardeman.nu>

                                             May 2007                                metastore(1)