On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 06:25, Aaron Konstam wrote: > > > > I've found that when I edit a file with vi or gedit I lose all of the > > user extended attributes associated with that file. A stat reveals that > > the inode number has changed. Is this the reason why I'm losing the > > extended attributes? Is vi and gedit creating a new file? Is it easy > > to change this behaviour? > > > I don't know for sure but that makes sense to me. When vi is used, at > least, a temporary copy of the file is created to be edited. It would > not surprise me that when you save the file a new file with a new inode > is created. If it did that, you would not be able to edit files where you have write permission on the file but not the directory containing them and hardlinked files would no longer be linked. It should be copying the temp file contents back over the original at least in cases where it can't duplicate all the attributes and links. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx