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NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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getxattr(2) System Calls Manual getxattr(2)
getxattr, lgetxattr, fgetxattr - retrieve an extended attribute
value
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <sys/xattr.h>
ssize_t getxattr(size_t size;
const char *path, const char *name,
void value[size], size_t size);
ssize_t lgetxattr(size_t size;
const char *path, const char *name,
void value[size], size_t size);
ssize_t fgetxattr(size_t size;
int fd, const char *name,
void value[size], size_t size);
Extended attributes are name:value pairs associated with inodes
(files, directories, symbolic links, etc.). They are extensions
to the normal attributes which are associated with all inodes in
the system (i.e., the stat(2) data). A complete overview of
extended attributes concepts can be found in xattr(7).
getxattr() retrieves the value of the extended attribute
identified by name and associated with the given path in the
filesystem. The attribute value is placed in the buffer pointed
to by value; size specifies the size of that buffer. The return
value of the call is the number of bytes placed in value.
lgetxattr() is identical to getxattr(), except in the case of a
symbolic link, where the link itself is interrogated, not the file
that it refers to.
fgetxattr() is identical to getxattr(), only the open file
referred to by fd (as returned by open(2)) is interrogated in
place of path.
An extended attribute name is a null-terminated string. The name
includes a namespace prefix; there may be several, disjoint
namespaces associated with an individual inode. The value of an
extended attribute is a chunk of arbitrary textual or binary data
that was assigned using setxattr(2).
If size is specified as zero, these calls return the current size
of the named extended attribute (and leave value unchanged). This
can be used to determine the size of the buffer that should be
supplied in a subsequent call. (But, bear in mind that there is a
possibility that the attribute value may change between the two
calls, so that it is still necessary to check the return status
from the second call.)
On success, these calls return a nonnegative value which is the
size (in bytes) of the extended attribute value. On failure, -1
is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.
E2BIG The size of the attribute value is larger than the maximum
size allowed; the attribute cannot be retrieved. This can
happen on filesystems that support very large attribute
values such as NFSv4, for example.
ENODATA
The named attribute does not exist, or the process has no
access to this attribute.
ENOTSUP
Extended attributes are not supported by the filesystem, or
are disabled.
ERANGE The size of the value buffer is too small to hold the
result.
In addition, the errors documented in stat(2) can also occur.
Linux.
Linux 2.4, glibc 2.3.
See listxattr(2).
getfattr(1), setfattr(1), listxattr(2), open(2), removexattr(2),
setxattr(2), stat(2), symlink(7), xattr(7)
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
fetched from
⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-06-28 getxattr(2)
Pages that refer to this page: io_uring_enter2(2), io_uring_enter(2), listxattr(2), open(2), removexattr(2), setxattr(2), syscalls(2), io_uring_prep_fgetxattr(3), io_uring_prep_getxattr(3), capabilities(7), symlink(7), xattr(7)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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