An inode is an entry in inode table that contains information about a file and directory. It is a is a data structure on a traditional Unix-style file system such as ext3 or ext4, xfs. Each file has a inode on Unix system. Refer to the solution section for more information.
Topic
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What is an indode?
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What is an inode in Linux?
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What is an inode number?
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Where are file/directory names are stored?
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What are the information an inode contains?
Solution
inode consists of the following information:
- File types ( executable, block, socket, device, pipe, etc )
- Permissions ( read, write, execute)
- UID ( Owner )
- GID ( Group )
- FileSize
- Time stamps including last access, last modification and last inode number change.
- File deletion time
- Number of links ( soft/hard )
- file location on disk.
- Other metadata about file.
Where are the file/directory names are stored?
inodes do not contain file names but contains other file metadata. Each file in Unix contains one filename and one inode number. The file system driver searches a directory looking for a particular filename and then converts the filename to the correct corresponding inode number.
How to check inode number of a file in Linux?
$ ls -li file1.txt
67197455 -rw-rw-r-- 1 user1 user1 14 Sep 6 00:37 file1.txt
$ stat file1.txt
File: ‘file1.txt’
Size: 14 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd05h/64773d Inode: 67197455 Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--) Uid: (1001/ user1) Gid: (1001/ user1)
Access: 2019-09-06 00:37:06.168758045 +0530
Modify: 2019-09-06 00:37:06.168758045 +0530
Change: 2019-09-06 00:37:06.168758045 +0530
Birth: -
