chattr

[Marc Evans]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 bscott at ntisys.com wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, at 11:39am, Marc at softwarehackery.com wrote:
> > I am trying to find a program, ideally rsync, that preserves attributes
> > set by chattr, when a file is copied. For example, consider the following:
> >
> > 	chattr +i foo
> > 	rsync foo bar
>
>   Everything else people have said is valid, but let me also point out that
> there is an inherent paradox in synchronizing an immutable file.  Yes, the
> program could remove the bit on the target, sync the file, and then put it
> back.  That's not the point.  The point is that the immutable bit was
> designed to be a bit an admin would set to lock out all possible changes.
> One might even go so far as to say it "shouldn't" be copied.

So, how would one create a backup of a system that has attributes set, so
that under a catastrphic recovery (i.e. build from scratch on a new disk)
that you get back exactly to where it was prior to the failure? Sounds to
me like the use of said bit is just plain dangerous, as the only means of
recovering those settings is to keep an accurate list of the settings
seperately from the actual filesystem and the backups/archives of said
filesystem. Truely sad, as there is good value to what those bit could
provide if they were more broadly supported.

- Marc

> --
> Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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