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).
removexattr()
removes the extended attribute identified by
name
and associated with the given
path
in the file system.
lremovexattr()
is identical to
removexattr(),
except in the case of a symbolic link, where the extended attribute is
removed from the link itself, not the file that it refers to.
fremovexattr()
is identical to
removexattr(),
only the extended attribute is removed from the open file referred to by
fd
(as returned by
open(2))
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.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned.
On failure, -1 is returned and
errno
is set appropriately.
If the named attribute does not exist,
errno
is set to
ENOATTR.
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.
This page is part of release 3.14 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/.