Re: rsync to "apply" xattrs-only from other object?

Thank you Roland for that suggestion: I honestly had forgotten about 
that option.
It's great (and available) for single, or a handful of objects, but...

I'm doing this for hundreds-of-thousands of filesystem objects 
(files+folders with many xattrs), so performance matters: therefore your 
suggestion would "cost" a program call, plus a write/read of a new 
xattr-dump file, which I expect to be significantly slower than let's 
say: doing the same in code, loading the xattrs lib only once?

And since I'm altering only filesystem "metadata", and not the "heavy" 
payload, that information is mostly lightweight (given that I'm using a 
90GB SSD partition as ZFS cache. Opinions/experiences about this?)

And so it would make perfect sense to "sync xattrs" in rsync, as IMO it 
considered /the/ filedata-synchronization tool of choice for 
small-to-large scale, reliable replication. :)

I truly (and professionally, as well as personally) believe that xattr 
key+value attributes in the filesystem have great value for 21st century 
"data handling demands", and consumer "collections" already qualifying 
as "big data" (as in 2003 terms): xattrs allow to use regular ZFS as 
object storage - with more metadata capabilities than S3.


What do you think? :)

Regards,
Peter

On 27.04.2026 00:47, RolandK wrote:
> do we really need rsync for this?
>
> root@debian:/# setfattr -n user.attr1 -v value1 ./dir/testfile
> root@debian:/# getfattr -R -d ./dir/testfile >attrs.dump
> root@debian:/# cat attrs.dump
> # file: dir/testfile
> user.attr1="value1"
>
> root@debian:/# xattr -c ./dir/testfile
> root@debian:/# getfattr -R -d ./dir/testfile
> root@debian:/#
> root@debian:/# setfattr --restore attrs.dump
> root@debian:/# getfattr -R -d ./dir/testfile
> # file: dir/testfile
> user.attr1="value1"
>
> regards
>
>
>
> Am 26.04.26 um 22:34 schrieb Peter B. via rsync:
>> Hi everyone :)
>>
>> I'd need to re-apply extended filesystem key-value metadata 
>> attributes (xattrs on ZFS) from one file/folder to another.
>>
>> But it's mandatory that the target "payload" (=binary file contents) 
>> stay untouched.
>> Just transfer (add/merge/overwrite) the xattrs?
>>
>> Using xattrs professionally for medium-to-large scale heritage and 
>> science collections, and using rsync for /everything/ regarding 
>> data-transfer. Thank you all so much!
>>
>> Would it be possible to hire one for adding that to rsync, merging 
>> into upstream?
>> What are your thoughts on this?
>>
>>
>> Thanks in advance!
>> Peter
>>
>


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