Inode

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wikipedia:inode

filename to inode lookup

Inodes store information about files and directories (folders), such as file ownership, access mode (read, write, execute permissions), and file type.

Within a POSIX system, a file has the following attributes[10] which may be retrieved by the stat system call:

• Device ID (this identifies the device containing the file; that is, the scope of uniqueness of the serial number).

File serial numbers. The file mode which determines the file type and how the file's owner, its group, and others can access the file. A link count telling how many hard links point to the inode.

• The User ID of the file's owner.
• The Group ID of the file.
• The device ID of the file if it is a device file.
• The size of the file in bytes.
• Timestamps telling when the inode itself was last modified (ctime, inode change time), the file content last modified (mtime, modification time), and last accessed (atime, access time).
• The preferred I/O block size.

( The number of blocks allocated to this file.

Related terms

• sar -F
• df -i or df --inodes
• ls -i
• File descriptor
• stat
• inotify

See also

• file, File system, directory, touch, mkdir, ls, ln truncate, fallocate, split, stat, inode, File descriptor, superblock, block size (blockdev), fuser, lsof, scrub, chattr, ulimit (nofiles), cp, mv, file (command), mkfifo, chmod