Linux Files – Difference Between xattr and chattr

The answer to you question is filesystem specific. For ext3, for example, have a look at fs/ext3/xattr.c, it contains the following description:

  16 /*
  17  * Extended attributes are stored directly in inodes (on file systems with
  18  * inodes bigger than 128 bytes) and on additional disk blocks. The i_file_acl
  19 
 * field contains the block number if an inode uses an additional block. All
  20  * attributes must fit in the inode and one additional block. Blocks that
  21  * contain the identical set of attributes may be shared among several inodes.
  22  * Identical blocks are detected by keeping a cache of blocks that have
  23  * recently been accessed.
  24  *
  25  * The attributes in inodes and on blocks have a different header; the entries
  26  * are stored in the same format:
  27  *
  28  *   +------------------+
  29  *   | header           |
  30  *   | entry 1          | |
  31  *   | entry 2          | | growing downwards
  32  *   | entry 3          | v
  33  *   | four null bytes  |
  34  *   | . . .            |
  35  *   | value 1          | ^
  36  *   | value 3          | | growing upwards
  37  *   | value 2          | |
  38  *   +------------------+
  39  *
  40  * The header is followed by multiple entry descriptors. In disk blocks, the
  41  * entry descriptors are kept sorted. In inodes, they are unsorted. The
  42  * attribute values are aligned to the end of the block in no specific order.
  43  *
  44  * Locking strategy
  45  * ----------------
  46  * EXT3_I(inode)->i_file_acl is protected by EXT3_I(inode)->xattr_sem.
  47  * EA blocks are only changed if they are exclusive to an inode, so
  48  * holding xattr_sem also means that nothing but the EA block's reference
  49  * count can change. Multiple writers to the same block are synchronized
  50  * by the buffer lock.
  51  */

Regarding the "how are attributes connected" question, the link is in the other way round, the inode has a link to the extended attributes, see EXT3_XATTR_NEXT and ext3_xattr_list_entries in xattr.h and xattr.c respectively.

To recap, the attributes are linked to the inode and are fs dependent, so yes, you will lose the attributes when burning a CD rom or emailing a file.

BLKRRPART tells the kernel to reread the partition table. man 4 sd

With BLKPG you can create, add, delete partitions as you please (from the kernel, not on disk of course). You have to tell the kernel the offset and size of individual partition, which implies that you must have parsed the partition table yourself beforehand. See Linux kernel: /include/uapi/linux/blkpg.h

I personally use partprobe (part of parted), which uses the latter approach, probably to support partition tables not supported by the kernel.