After discussing this with upstream it became clear that the documentation is incorrect and it is deliberate that only the "user.*" extended attributes are applied by default during extraction.
"This decision was done because only user.* attributes are 100% safe to extract. The security.* (especially capabilities) can have some binary format specific to the box creating the archive but incompatible with host extracting the archive." https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2019-06/msg00001.html The man for tar should be updated to reflect that to avoid any confusion. ** Summary changed: - only user.* extended attributes restored upon extraction + its undocumented that only user.* extended attributes restored upon extraction ** Summary changed: - its undocumented that only user.* extended attributes restored upon extraction + its undocumented that only user.* extended attributes are restored upon extraction -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1831150 Title: its undocumented that only user.* extended attributes are restored upon extraction To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/tar/+bug/1831150/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs