metastore(1)						      General Commands Manual						      metastore(1)

NAME

       metastore - stores and restores filesystem metadata

SYNOPSIS

       metastore ACTION [OPTION...] [PATH...]

DESCRIPTION

       Stores  or  restores  metadata (owner, group, permissions, xattrs and optionally mtime) for a filesystem tree. This can be used to preserve
       the metadata in situations where it is usually not stored (git and tar for example) or as a tripwire like mechanism to detect  any  changes
       to  metadata.  Note  that e.g.  SELinux stores its labels in xattrs so care should be taken when applying stored metadata to make sure that
       system security is not compromised.

ACTIONS

       -c, --compare
	      Shows the difference between the stored and real metadata.

       -s, --save
	      Saves the current metadata to ./.metadata or to the specified file (see --file option below).

       -a, --apply
	      Attempts to apply the stored metadata to the file system.

       -h, --help
	      Prints a help message and exits.

OPTIONS

       -v, --verbose
	      Causes metastore to print more verbose messages. Can be repeated more than once for even more verbosity.

       -q, --quiet
	      Causes metastore to print less verbose messages. Can be repeated more than once for even less verbosity.

       -m, --mtime
	      Causes metastore to also take mtime into account for the compare or apply actions.

       -e, --empty-dirs
	      Also attempts to recreate missing empty directories. May be useful where empty directories are not tracked (e.g.	by  git  or  cvs).
	      Only works in combination with the apply option.	This is currently an experimental feature.

       -f <file>, --file <file>
	      Causes the metadata to be saved, read from the specified file rather than ./.metadata.

PATHS

       If  no  path  is specified, metastore will use the current directory as the basis for the actions. This is the recommended way of executing
       metastore.  Alternatively, one or more paths can be specified and they will each be examined. Later invocations should be  made	using  the
       exact same paths to ensure that the stored metadata is interpreted correctly.

AUTHOR

       Written by David Hardeman <david@hardeman.nu>

								     May 2007							      metastore(1)