chattr

[Michael O'Donnell]

> So, when performing a backup of a filesystem (ext2 or ext3)
> which has these attributes, it seems that none of the tools that
> I have been able to identify actually backup file attributes.
> As a result, if you ever set those attributes, you need to keep a
> log of how so that should you ever need to restore from a backup,
> you know how to reset the attributes.  I hope that I am wrong on
> this, as it would be truely sad if this is true.


There are filesystem-independent attributes and
filesystem-specific attributes.  The standard archiving
and file-management tools do a pretty good job of
manipulating the filesystem-independent attributes while
leaving the filesystem-specific attributes alone.  This
lowest-common-denominator situation is clearly frustrating
('been there!) to those who come to depend on some set of
filesystem-specific attributes but allow me to point out
that it meets the needs of an impressively large number
of Linux users so it may not be fair to call it "sad"...