getfattr - Unix, Linux Command

NAME

getfattr - get extended attributes of filesystem objects

SYNOPSIS

getfattr [-hRLP] -n name [-e en] 
pathname...
getfattr [-hRLP] -d [-e en] 
[-m pattern] pathname...

DESCRIPTION

For each file, getfattr displays the file name, and the set of extended attribute names (and optionally values) which are associated with that file.

The output format of getfattr -d is as follows:

 1:  # file: somedir/
 2:  user.name0="value0"
 3:  user.name1="value1"
 4:  user.name2="value2"
 5:  ...

Line 1 identifies the file name for which the following lines are being reported. The remaining lines (lines 2 to 4 above) show the name and value pairs associated with the specified file.

OPTIONS

Tag	Description
-n name, --name=name
	Dump the value of the named extended attribute extended attribute.
-d, --dump
	Dump the values of all extended attributes associated with pathname.
-e en, --encoding=en
	Encode values after retrieving them. Valid values of en are "text", "hex", and "base64". Values encoded as text strings are enclosed in double quotes ("), while strings encoded as hexidecimal and base64 are prefixed with 0x and 0s, respectively.
-h, --no-dereference
	Do not follow symlinks. If pathname is a symbolic link, the symbolic link itself is examined, rather than the file the link refers to.
-m pattern, --match=pattern
	Only include attributes with names matching the regular expression pattern. The default value for pattern is "^user\\.", -m which includes all the attributes in the user namespace. Refer to attr(5) for a more detailed discussion on namespaces.
--absolute-names
	Do not strip leading slash characters (’/’). The default behaviour is to strip leading slash characters.
--only-values
	Dump out the extended attribute value(s) only.
-R, --recursive
	List the attributes of all files and directories recursively.
-L, --logical
	Logical walk, follow symbolic links. The default behaviour is to follow symbolic link arguments, and to skip symbolic links encountered in subdirectories.
-P, --physical
	Physical walk, skip all symbolic links. This also skips symbolic link arguments.
--version
	Print the version of getfattr 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

Consider the file test.txt. Without any extended attributes set, the command would display nothing

$ getfattr -d test.txt
$

You can set extended attributes to the file with setfattr command

$ setfattr -n user.Name1 -v Value1
$ setfattr -n user.Name2 -v Value2

With the extended attributes set the the command getfattr would show output as below

$ getfattr -d test.txt
# file: test.txt
user.Name1="Value1"
user.Name2="Value2"

Above example uses -d option to display all attributes.

You can use -n option to display only specific attributes

$ getfattr -n user.Name2 test.txt
# file: test.txt
user.Name2="Value2"

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