Editing XFS (section)

===Extended attributes===
XFS provides multiple data streams for files; this is made possible by its implementation of [[extended file attributes|extended attributes]]. These allow the storage of a number of name/value pairs attached to a file. Names are nul-terminated printable character strings which are up to 256&nbsp;bytes in length, while their associated values can contain up to 64&nbsp;[[kilobyte|KB]] of binary data.

They are further subdivided into two namespaces: <code>root</code> and <code>user</code>. Extended attributes stored in the root namespace can be modified only by the superuser, while attributes in the user namespace can be modified by any user with permission to write to the file.

Extended attributes can be attached to any kind of XFS inode, including symbolic links, device nodes, directories, etc. The <code>attr</code> utility can be used to manipulate extended attributes from the command line, and the <code>xfsdump</code> and <code>xfsrestore</code> utilities are aware of extended attributes, and will back up and restore their contents. Many other backup systems do not support working with extended attributes.