diff --git a/nixos/tests/all-tests.nix b/nixos/tests/all-tests.nix
index 35654b0fbe46..92115080b7e8 100644
--- a/nixos/tests/all-tests.nix
+++ b/nixos/tests/all-tests.nix
@@ -249,6 +249,7 @@ in
   atd = runTest ./atd.nix;
   atop = import ./atop.nix { inherit pkgs runTest; };
   atticd = runTest ./atticd.nix;
+  attr = pkgs.callPackage ./attr.nix { };
   atuin = runTest ./atuin.nix;
   audiobookshelf = runTest ./audiobookshelf.nix;
   audit = runTest ./audit.nix;
diff --git a/nixos/tests/attr.nix b/nixos/tests/attr.nix
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..782f7031038e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/nixos/tests/attr.nix
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+# The reason this lives in nixos/tests is because `attr` is a bootstrap package,
+# and it's very non-trivial to use `vmTools` in its passthru.
+#
+# The reason we need vmTools in the first place is because we don't allow
+# extended attributes in the sandbox.
+{
+  lib,
+  vmTools,
+  attr,
+  perl,
+}:
+vmTools.runInLinuxVM (
+  attr.overrideAttrs (oa: {
+    nativeCheckInputs = [ perl ];
+    preCheck = "patchShebangs test";
+
+    # FIXME(balsoft): half of the test suite is skipped because the hacky test
+    # harness doesn't know that we're root even though we are (it's looking for
+    # /etc/group, which we don't have). Probably best to submit a fix upstream
+    # rather than patch it ourselves.
+    doCheck = true;
+    memSize = 4096;
+
+    meta = oa.meta // {
+      maintainers = oa.meta.maintainers or [ ] ++ [ lib.maintainers.balsoft ];
+    };
+  })
+)
diff --git a/pkgs/development/libraries/attr/default.nix b/pkgs/development/libraries/attr/default.nix
index 046d19925b44..9d7965e55b5d 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/libraries/attr/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/libraries/attr/default.nix
@@ -37,6 +37,9 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
     done
   '';
 
+  # See nixos/tests/attr.nix
+  doCheck = false;
+
   meta = {
     homepage = "https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/attr/";
     description = "Library and tools for manipulating extended attributes";