per‐file compression.
N A file with the ’N’ attribute set indicates that the file has data stored inline, within the inode itself. It may not be set or cleared using chattr(1), although it can be displayed by lsattr(1).
P A directory with the ’P’ attribute set will enforce a hierarchical structure for project id’s. This means that files and directories created in the directory will inherit the project id of the directory, re‐
name operations are constrained so when a file or directory is moved into another directory, that the project ids must match. In addition, a hard link to file can only be created when the project id for the
file and the destination directory match.
s When a file with the ’s’ attribute set is deleted, its blocks are zeroed and written back to the disk. Note: please make sure to read the bugs and limitations section at the end of this document.
S When a file with the ’S’ attribute set is modified, the changes are written synchronously to the disk; this is equivalent to the ’sync’ mount option applied to a subset of the files.
t A file with the ’t’ attribute will not have a partial block fragment at the end of the file merged with other files (for those file systems which support tail‐merging). This is necessary for applications such
as LILO which read the file system directly, and which don’t understand tail‐merged files. Note: As of this writing, the ext2, ext3, and ext4 file systems do not support tail‐merging.
T A directory with the ’T’ attribute will be deemed to be the top of directory hierarchies for the purposes of the Orlov block allocator. This is a hint to the block allocator used by ext3 and ext4 that the sub‐
directories under this directory are not related, and thus should be spread apart for allocation purposes. For example it is a very good idea to set the ’T’ attribute on the /home directory, so that
/home/john and /home/mary are placed into separate block groups. For directories where this attribute is not set, the Orlov block allocator will try to group subdirectories closer together where possible.
u When a file with the ’u’ attribute