Backup file attributes / restore them later

Question

Currently I am trying to imagine a way of backing up all the file attributes and permissions of a certain directory, i.e. /volatile, for later restore. The procedere I have in mind would be:

• backing up all the file attributes in /volatile
• update /volatile (cloned from a git repo)
• restore the file attributes to the new files

File attributes which should be preserved are for example, ownership and access rights as well as setuid-bits, etc ...

How would I do that if the file and directory structure is always completly identical and how would I do that if there are minor changes (i.e. one file deleted).

Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

This will restore Unix file permissions, POSIX ACLs, and (if setfacl run as root) file ownership:

getfacl -R /volatile > /backup/acls

cd / && setfacl --restore /backup/acls

This will restore ext3/XFS extended attributes (xattrs):

getfattr -Rd /volatile > /backup/xattrs

cd / && setfattr --restore /backup/xattrs