macos extended attributes xattr -d not removing extended attributes

Tuesday, 12 December 2017

For a simple local file owned by myself the following is having no effect:

1:37:51/spark-training-scripts:113 $ll  /shared/sparkeast.pem
-rw-r--r--@ 1 steve  staff  1692 Mar  7 11:30 /shared/sparkeast.pem

Let us view the extended attributes:

11:44:00/spark-training-scripts:114 $xattr /shared/sparkeast.pem
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms
com.apple.quarantine

Attempt to delete the extended attributes (all of them):

11:44:24/spark-training-scripts:115 $xattr -d /shared/sparkeast.pem

No change:

11:44:28/spark-training-scripts:116 $xattr /shared/sparkeast.pem
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms
com.apple.quarantine

Answer

xattr -d will delete a single attribute, and you must specify the attribute name:

xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms /shared/sparkeast.pem
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /shared/sparkeast.pem

Alternately, you can use xattr -c, which clears all extended attributes from the file:

xattr -c /shared/sparkeast.pem

Notes