Comments on: Removing all extended attributes from a directory tree

By: vikram jadhav

vikram jadhav — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:55:08 +0000

How to remove extended attribute from NTFS , using win32 API’s

By: zzamboni

zzamboni — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:16:57 +0000

I think this is because Time Machine files are also created with ACLs that disallow anyone from modifying them (they are meant to be permanent copies). I imagine any copies you make also get those ACLs copied. The easiest way around this is to temporarily disable ACLs on the file system using the fsaclctl command, or to use chmod to permanently remove the ACLs.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:03:56 +0000

I was unable to get the xattr stuff to remove the extended attributes from my Time Machine copies (I had done them originally with -p which was a bad idea, I suppose). However, using 'cp -rX' along with renames (and admin access) solved my problem.

By: zzamboni

zzamboni — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:22:03 +0000

Thank you – very nice, I had never noticed the -X option.

By: A Friend

A Friend — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:35:47 +0000

It also might be worth mentioning that you can create copy of a file or directory that doesn't have any extended attributes by passing the -X option to the cp command.

For example, if you want to make a clean tar file of the directory "my_files", you could do the following:

# copy my_files to the Desktop, excluding extended attributes
cp -rX ~/Documents/my_files ~/Desktop/my_files

# go to Desktop
cd ~/Desktop

# create the tar file, excluding .DS_Store files
tar cjvf my_files.tar.bz2 –exclude .DS_Store my_files

# remove the copy
rm -r my_files

By: zzamboni

zzamboni — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:21:32 +0000

It was a mistake. I have corrected it. Thanks for pointing it out!

By: Tyler Havener

Tyler Havener — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:49:17 +0000

is there a reason why "echo" is listed twice?

By: John Rikes

John Rikes — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:26:42 +0000

Should this remove the info found in the "Get Info" menu item? After I ran this, I still see a URL from where I downloaded my files from…

By: zzamboni

zzamboni — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:50:08 +0000

Justin: it doesn't, because you have to give to xattr -d the attribute you want to delete. That's what the script does – first find all the attributes that exist under the directory, and then loop over them, removing them in sequence.

By: Justin Force

Justin Force — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:09:42 +0000

Wait! No it doesn't. Wish I could delete that post…