setfattr(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLES | AUTHOR | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

SETFATTR(1)                  File Utilities                  SETFATTR(1)

NAME         top

       setfattr - set extended attributes of filesystem objects

SYNOPSIS         top

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

DESCRIPTION         top

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

OPTIONS         top

       -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         top

       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         top

       Andreas Gruenbacher, <[email protected]> and the SGI
       XFS development team, <[email protected]>.

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

SEE ALSO         top

       getfattr(1), xattr(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the attr (manipulating filesystem extended
       attributes) project.  Information about the project can be found
       at ⟨http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/attr⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=attr⟩.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/attr.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-02-18.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Dec 2001                   Extended Attributes               SETFATTR(1)

Pages that refer to this page: attr(1)getfattr(1)getxattr(2)listxattr(2)removexattr(2)setxattr(2)tmpfiles.d(5)xattr(7)