metastore(1) General Commands Manual metastore(1)
NAME
metastore - stores and restores filesystem metadata
SYNOPSIS
metastore ACTION [OPTION...] [PATH...]
DESCRIPTION
Stores or restores metadata (owner, group, permissions, xattrs and optionally mtime) for a filesystem tree. This can be used to preserve
the metadata in situations where it is usually not stored (git and tar for example) or as a tripwire like mechanism to detect any changes
to metadata. Note that e.g. SELinux stores its labels in xattrs so care should be taken when applying stored metadata to make sure that
system security is not compromised.
ACTIONS
-c, --compare
Shows the difference between the stored and real metadata.
-s, --save
Saves the current metadata to ./.metadata or to the specified file (see --file option below).
-a, --apply
Attempts to apply the stored metadata to the file system.
-h, --help
Prints a help message and exits.
OPTIONS
-v, --verbose
Causes metastore to print more verbose messages. Can be repeated more than once for even more verbosity.
-q, --quiet
Causes metastore to print less verbose messages. Can be repeated more than once for even less verbosity.
-m, --mtime
Causes metastore to also take mtime into account for the compare or apply actions.
-e, --empty-dirs
Also attempts to recreate missing empty directories. May be useful where empty directories are not tracked (e.g. by git or cvs).
Only works in combination with the apply option. This is currently an experimental feature.
-f <file>, --file <file>
Causes the metadata to be saved, read from the specified file rather than ./.metadata.
PATHS
If no path is specified, metastore will use the current directory as the basis for the actions. This is the recommended way of executing
metastore. Alternatively, one or more paths can be specified and they will each be examined. Later invocations should be made using the
exact same paths to ensure that the stored metadata is interpreted correctly.
AUTHOR
Written by David Hardeman <david@hardeman.nu>
May 2007 metastore(1)