1 .TH metastore "1" "February 2012"
4 metastore \- stores and restores filesystem metadata
7 \fBmetastore\fR \fIACTION\fR [\fIOPTION...\fR] [\fIPATH...\fR]
10 Stores or restores metadata (owner, group, permissions, xattrs and optionally
11 mtime) for a filesystem tree. This can be used to preserve the metadata in
12 situations where it is usually not stored (git and tar for example) or as
13 a tripwire like mechanism to detect any changes to metadata. Note that e.g.
14 SELinux stores its labels in xattrs so care should be taken when applying
15 stored metadata to make sure that system security is not compromised.
20 Shows the difference between the stored and real metadata.
23 Saves the current metadata to ./.metadata or to the specified file
24 (see \-\-file option below).
27 Attempts to apply the stored metadata to the file system.
30 Prints a help message and exits.
35 Causes metastore to print more verbose messages. Can be repeated more than
36 once for even more verbosity.
39 Causes metastore to print less verbose messages. Can be repeated more than
40 once for even less verbosity.
43 Causes metastore to also take mtime into account for the compare or apply actions.
45 .B \-e, \-\-empty\-dirs
46 Also attempts to recreate missing empty directories. May be useful where
47 empty directories are not tracked (e.g. by git or cvs).
48 Only works in combination with the \fBapply\fR option.
49 This is currently an experimental feature.
52 Prevents metastore from omitting .git directories.
54 .B \-f <file>, \-\-file <file>
55 Causes the metadata to be saved, read from the specified file rather
59 If no path is specified, metastore will use the current directory as the basis
60 for the actions. This is the recommended way of executing metastore.
61 Alternatively, one or more paths can be specified and they will each be
62 examined. Later invocations should be made using the exact same paths to
63 ensure that the stored metadata is interpreted correctly.
66 Written by David Härdeman <david@hardeman.nu>