SETFATTR

Section: File Utilities (1)
Updated: Extended Attributes
Page Index

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

Andreas Gruenbacher, <andreas.gruenbacher@gmail.com> and the SGI XFS development team, <linux-xfs@oss.sgi.com>.

Please send your bug reports or comments to <https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=attr> or <acl-devel@nongnu.org>.