I was just thinking -- would it be possible to just 'emulate' xattrs on systems that don't support them natively with a "--Xe" switch -- that would store the xattrs in a file ".<filename>.xattr" in the same dir as the copied file. The switch only be paid attention to on systems that don't support xattrs -- otherwise it would look for the filename ".filename.xattr" (source or target). If a user rsynced a dir from one place to another without the -Xe switch, then the specially named files would simply be copied like any other file. Would help the xattrs to be more portable -- even tar'ed on a remote system. ??? Linda