GETEXTATTR(1) BSD General Commands Manual GETEXTATTR(1)NAME
getextattr, lsextattr, rmextattr, setextattr — manipulate extended
attributes
SYNOPSISgetextattr [-fhq] [-s | -x | -v style] [namespace] attrname filename ...
lsextattr [-fhq] namespace filename ...
rmextattr [-fhq] [namespace] attrname filename ...
setextattr [-fhnq] [namespace] attrname attrvalue filename ...
setextattr [-fhnq] -i valuefile [namespace] attrname filename ...
DESCRIPTION
These utilities are user tools to manipulate the named extended
attributes on files and directories.
The namespace argument should be the namespace of the attribute to
retrieve: legal values are user and system. For all operations except
lsextattr, the namespace argument may be omitted if the attribute name is
namespace prefixed, like in user.test. In that later case, the user
namespace prefix obviously selects user namespace. system, security, and
trusted namespace prefixes select the system namespace.
The attrname argument should be the name of the attribute, filename the
name of the target file or directory, attrvalue a string to store in the
attribute.
The following options are available:
-f (Force.) Ignore errors on individual filenames and continue with
the remaining arguments.
-h (No follow.) If the file is a symbolic link, perform the opera‐
tion on the link itself rather than the file that the link points
to.
-i valuefile
(Input file.) Read the attribute value from file valuefile. Use
this flag in order to set a binary value for an attribute.
-n (NUL-terminate.) NUL-terminate the extent content written out.
-q (Quiet.) Do not print out the pathname and suppress error mes‐
sages.
-s (Stringify.) Escape nonprinting characters and put quotes around
the output.
-v style
(Visual.) Process the attribute value through vis(3), using
style. Valid values for style are:
default
Use default vis(3) encoding.
c Use C-style backslash sequences, like in vis -c.
http Use URI encoding from RFC 1808, like in vis -h.
octal Display in octal, like in vis -o.
vis Alias for default.
cstyle Alias for c.
httpstyle
Alias for http.
-x (Hex.) Print the output in hexadecimal.
EXAMPLES
setextattr system md5 `md5 -q /boot/kernel/kernel` /boot/kernel/kernel
getextattr system md5 /boot/kernel/kernel
lsextattr system /boot/kernel/kernel
rmextattr system md5 /boot/kernel/kernel
Examples omitting namespace (and attribute value) argument:
setextattr -i valuefile trusted.gfid /export/wd3a
getextattr-x trusted.gfid /export/wd3a
SEE ALSOextattr(3), extattrctl(8), extattr(9)HISTORY
Extended attribute support was developed as part of the TrustedBSD
Project, and introduced in FreeBSD 5.0 and NetBSD 3.0. It was developed
to support security extensions requiring additional labels to be associ‐
ated with each file or directory.
Extended attribute support was resurrected and made more usable in
NetBSD 5.2.
AUTHORS
Robert N M Watson
Poul-Henning Kamp
Emmanuel Dreyfus
BSD January 2, 2005 BSD