chattr

[Keyser Soze]

> 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

You can use the dd command whenever a filesystem backup is necessary.  It
can't perform incremental backups like the dump command, but it does 
preserve all attributes, even the immutable attr.