Abstract: A system and method to provide native support in a distributed computing environment distributed file system for an operating system's extended file attributes. Such attributes remain invisible in the namespace which the operating system's distributed file system clients may access. A directory of the form .*.sub.-- for a file in DFS namespace is created for which extended attributes (EA) are required, with a subdirectory thereunder whose name is that of the file. Extended attributes are filed under this .*.sub.-- directory having filenames of the attributes' names. Provision is made for discriminating EAs and for efficiently accessing total EA size and number of critical EAs, by cumulating and storing them in an additional file under the subdirectory.