extended attributes on files

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 24, 2008, at 21:22, Tom Allison wrote:

> I have some files that I backed up to a Linux box via 'rsync -av'
> and restored them later on.
>
> But they can't be used by the intended application.
>
> the only difference I can find is that the usable files I have  
> created have a permissions of rwxr--r--@
>
> And ls - at l returns something to this affect:
> 	com.apple.FinderInfo	32
> 	com.apple.ResourceFork	730
>
> I am under the believe that if I can apply these extensions to the  
> original files that I will be able to use them.  But I have no idea  
> where to start.  These things are not in chmod.

This question isn't really on-topic for this list, but...

It sounds like these files have a resource fork, and you didn't back  
up that part. Hence, information has been lost.

This explains resource forks, in probably more detail than you need:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork

The take-home point is that Mac files can have both a data part and a  
resource part, and you only backed up the data part. Depending on the  
software that created the file, the resource part may be  
inconsequential extra data (for example, in SimpleText, the data fork  
contains the text of a text document and the resource fork contains  
style information about the text; in BBEdit, the data fork contains  
the text and the resource fork contains information about where the  
window is placed on the screen and document-specific preferences) or  
the resource part may be the entirety of the file. What software  
created these files?