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GETXATTR
Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 2001-12-01
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NAME
getxattr, lgetxattr, fgetxattr - retrieve an extended attribute value
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <attr/xattr.h>
ssize_t getxattr(const char *path, const char *name,
void *value, size_t size);
ssize_t lgetxattr(const char *path, const char *name,
void *value, size_t size);
ssize_t fgetxattr(int fd, const char *name,
void *value, size_t size);
DESCRIPTION
Extended attributes are
name:value
pairs associated with inodes (files, directories, symbolic links, etc.).
They are extensions to the normal attributes which are associated
with all inodes in the system (i.e., the
stat(2)
data).
A complete overview of extended attributes concepts can be found in
attr(5).
getxattr()
retrieves the
value
of the extended attribute identified by
name
and associated with the given
path
in the file system.
The length of the attribute
value
is returned.
lgetxattr()
is identical to
getxattr(),
except in the case of a symbolic link, where the link itself is
interrogated, not the file that it refers to.
fgetxattr()
is identical to
getxattr(),
only the open file referred to by
fd
(as returned by
open(2))
is interrogated in place of
path.
An extended attribute
name
is a simple null-terminated string.
The name includes a namespace prefix; there may be several, disjoint
namespaces associated with an individual inode.
The value of an extended attribute is a chunk of arbitrary textual or
binary data of specified length.
An empty buffer of
size
zero can be passed into these calls to return the current size of the
named extended attribute, which can be used to estimate the size of a
buffer which is sufficiently large to hold the value associated with
the extended attribute.
The interface is designed to allow guessing of initial buffer
sizes, and to enlarge buffers when the return value indicates
that the buffer provided was too small.
RETURN VALUE
On success, a positive number is returned indicating the size of the
extended attribute value.
On failure, -1 is returned and
errno
is set appropriately.
If the named attribute does not exist, or the process has no access to
this attribute,
errno
is set to
ENOATTR.
If the
size
of the
value
buffer is too small to hold the result,
errno
is set to
ERANGE.
If extended attributes are not supported by the file system, or are disabled,
errno
is set to
ENOTSUP.
The errors documented for the
stat(2)
system call are also applicable here.
VERSIONS
These system calls have been available on Linux since kernel 2.4;
glibc support is provided since version 2.3.
CONFORMING TO
These system calls are Linux-specific.
SEE ALSO
getfattr(1),
setfattr(1),
listxattr(2),
open(2),
removexattr(2),
setxattr(2),
stat(2),
attr(5),
symlink(7)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.27 of the Linux
man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
and information about reporting bugs,
can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- RETURN VALUE
-
- VERSIONS
-
- CONFORMING TO
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- COLOPHON
-
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