VERITAS File System 3.5 (HP OnlineJFS/JFS 3.5) Administrator's Guide (August 2003)

Chapter 3

Extent Attributes

Commands Related to Extent Attributes

The VxFS commands for manipulating extent attributes are setext and getext; they allow the user to set up

ﬁles with a given set of extent attributes or view any attributes that are already associated with a ﬁle. See the

getext (1) and setext (1) manual pages for details on using these commands.

The VxFS-speciﬁc commands vxdump and vxrestore, and the mv, cp, and cpio commands, preserve extent

attributes when backing up, restoring, moving, or copying ﬁles.

Most of these commands include a command line option (-e) for maintaining extent attributes on ﬁles. This

option speciﬁes dealing with a VxFS ﬁle that has extent attribute information including reserved space, a

ﬁxed extent size, and extent alignment. The extent attribute information may be lost if the destination ﬁle

system does not support extent attributes, has a different block size than the source ﬁle system, or lacks free

extents appropriate to satisfy the extent attribute requirements.

The -e option takes any of the following keywords as an argument:

The commands that move, copy, or archive ﬁles (mv, cp and cpio) use the -e option with arguments of

ignore, warn, or force.

For example, the mv command could be used with the -e option to produce the following results:

• The ignore keyword loses any extent attributes for ﬁles.

• The warn keyword issues a warning if extent attributes for a ﬁle cannot be preserved. Such a situation

may take place if the ﬁle is moved into a non-VxFS ﬁle system; the ﬁle would ultimately be moved while

the extent attributes would be lost.

• The force keyword issues an error if attributes are lost and the ﬁle is not relocated.

warn Issues a warning message if extent attribute information cannot

be maintained (the default)

force Fails the copy if extent attribute information cannot be

maintained

ignore Ignores extent attribute information entirely