On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 15:52 +0100, david carvalho wrote:
> Hi !
> after I run a few tests, I've verified that "dump" can backup/restore
> files
> with selinu attributes. Later "tar" versions seem to do this also, but
> when I extract
> a tar archive with "--xattr" or "--selinux", the attributes aren't
> there.
> So there are 2 options. Or they aren't been created whith these
> attributes, or it's
> on the extraction stage.
> Could you please provide me a simple example of tar creation and
> extraction for 
> selinux/extended attributes ?

 From man tar:

       --acls this option causes tar to store each file’s ACLs in the archive.

       --selinux
              this option causes tar to store  each  file’s  SELinux  security
              context information in the archive.

       --xattrs
              this  option causes tar to store each file’s extended attributes
              in the archive. This option also enables --acls and--selinux  if
              they haven’t been set already, due to the fact that the data for
              those are stored in special xattrs.

 As the above implies tar doesn't automatically create archives with any
xattrs in them. However if the information is there it will
automatically use it on extraction.
 The simple create example is:

 tar --xattrs -cvf my-backup.tar ./path/to/backup

…at which point extracting as normal will use that information (using
--no-xattrs etc. will tell tar to ignore the information in an
extracting archive).

-- 
James Antill <jantill@redhat.com>