Dan Ritter (12023-01-25): > There are extended attributes, of which the only one you are > likely to encounter is i, immutable. It is occasionally useful > to nail down the state of a file even when something properly > has write permissions for it. > > lsattr and chattr are the relevant commands.
You are confusing two concepts. What you describe are file attributes specific to the ext2/3/4 filesystems. They are not called “extended attributes” because extended attributes are something else. Extended attributes are something newer, and much more powerful. For example : crw-rw----+ 1 root kvm 10, 232 Jan 25 08:33 kvm crw-rw-r--+ 1 root netdev 10, 242 Jan 25 08:33 rfkill crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 Jan 25 08:33 video0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 1 Jan 25 08:33 video1 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 2 Jan 25 08:33 video2 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 3 Jan 25 08:33 video3 The + at the end of the permissions means there are ACLs on these devices, allowing the console user to access them. ACLs are implemented using extended attributes. The fancy security systems like SE Linux use them too. Regards, -- Nicolas George
