On Thursday, March 31, 2011 09:27:00 Anne Wilson wrote:

I have a small text file that I want to ensure cannot be accidentally deleted, so I ran

chattr -i /home/anne/WebPages/UserBase/filename.txt

If you want to add an attribute you have to use +<attribute> , because -i means "remove". See man chattr so you need: chattr +i /home/anne/WebPages/UserBase/filename.txt

(as root, of course). Running lsattr against the same file produced

-------------e- /home/anne/WebPages/UserBase/filename.txt

'i' doesn't show in ls -l filename, either. I haven't come across 'e' before. What is it, and is my file immutable or not?

What is it: man chattr: The 'e' attribute indicates that the file is using extents for mapping the blocks on disk. It may not be removed using chattr(1).

Is your file immutable: no, it isn't

Michal

On Thursday 31 March 2011 10:26:10 Giuliano Colla wrote:

Anne Wilson ha scritto:

...

I have a small text file that I want to ensure cannot be accidentally deleted, so I ran

chattr -i /home/anne/WebPages/UserBase/filename.txt

(as root, of course). Running lsattr against the same file produced

-------------e- /home/anne/WebPages/UserBase/filename.txt

'i' doesn't show in ls -l filename, either. I haven't come across 'e' before. What is it, and is my file immutable or not?

Anne

1. You must be superuser (i.e. login as root, or use /su/) in order to

have chattr set the /i /attribute/. 2) -i /*removes* the i attribute, doesn't set it. From chattr man page, the rule is: - sign removes, + sign adds = sign makes it the only attribute. You should type:

chatttr +i /home/anne/etc..

then with lsattr you'll see something like: ----i-------- file.txt

Thanks, both of you. Definitely a Duh! moment. Put it down to senility ;-)

Anne