What does the dot at the end of the permissions in the output of "ls -lah" mean?

ls file-attributes xattr
miller picture miller · Jun 2, 2015 · Viewed 21.8k times · Source

I found some Linux files, and when I type ls -lah, it outputs this permissions format:

... 
drwxr-xr-x.  2 root    root  
...
-rw-rw-r--.  1 root    root 
...

I would like to know, what is the meaning of the dot (-rw-rw-r--.) at the end of the permissions format?

Answer

phoxis picture phoxis · Jun 2, 2015

From info coreutils 'ls invocation' under Linux

GNU `ls' uses a `.' character to indicate a file with an SELinux
     security context, but no other alternate access method.

A file with any other combination of alternate access methods is
     marked with a `+' character.

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