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Unix Inodes and Files

from ThoughtBot 'Lunchtime Lightning'

Inodes are data-structure that represent metadata of a file, stored on disk and references the location of actual blob.

Metadata Fields

  • who owns/access; user and group ownership; access permissions
  • type of file; regular, directory, character device, block device, FIFO pipe
  • access times; file accessed and modified, inode modified
  • number of hard links to file
  • addresses of disk blocks containing data
  • file size
  • doesn't have file-paths

example inode

  • owner: abc
  • group: abc,xyz
  • type: regular file
  • permissions: rwx-r-xr-x
  • accessed: Date-Time-stamp
  • modified: Date-Time-stamp
  • inode: Date-Time-stamp
  • size: ijk bytes
  • (disk addresses)

Use in commands

  • get inode number of files
ls -li /some/path
  • list a file by inode number
find . -inum <inode-number>

References:

Papers

  • "A fast file system for Unix" by Marshall Kirk McKusick, William N. Joy, Smauel J. Leffer & Robert S. Faby
  • "The Unix time-sharing system" by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson

Books

  • "The Design of the Unix OS" by Maurice J. Bach
  • "The Unix Programming Environment" by Brian W. Kernighan & Rob Pike
  • "Advanced Programming of Unix Environment" by W. Richard Stevens & Stephen A. Rago