The ext3 root inode was treated specially with respect
to in-inode extended attributes, for reasons detailed
in the removed comment below. The first mkfs-created
inodes would not get extra_i_size or the EXT3_STATE_XATTR
flag set in ext3_read_inode, which disallowed reading or
setting in-inode EAs on the root.
However, in ext4, ext4_mark_inode_dirty calls
ext4_expand_extra_isize for all inodes; once this is done
EAs may be placed in the root ext4 inode body.
But for reasons above, it won't be found after a reboot.