File attributes puzzle

[Michal Hlavinka]

On Thursday, March 31, 2011 09:27:00 Anne Wilson wrote:
> I have a small text file that I want to ensure cannot be accidentally deleted, 
> so I ran 
> 
> chattr -i /home/anne/WebPages/UserBase/filename.txt

If you want to add an attribute you have to use +<attribute> , because -i means "remove". 
See man chattr
so you need: chattr +i /home/anne/WebPages/UserBase/filename.txt

> (as root, of course).  Running lsattr against the same file produced 
> 
> -------------e- /home/anne/WebPages/UserBase/filename.txt
> 
> 'i' doesn't show in ls -l filename, either.  I haven't come across 'e' before.  
> What is it, and is my file immutable or not?

What is it: man chattr: The 'e' attribute indicates that the file is using 
extents for mapping the blocks on disk.  It may not be removed using chattr(1).

Is your file immutable: no, it isn't

Michal