Inodes and about

drimades · 12-01-2006, 06:16 AM

What information about the files can be found in a inode? Is there a place where the system with an information story about the files (access time, modify time, ecc.)?

pixellany · 12-01-2006, 08:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drimades

What information about the files can be found in a inode? Is there a place where the system with an information story about the files (access time, modify time, ecc.)?

This of course depends on the filesystem....In general, I think inodes are simply pointers to disk addresses where the actual data is.

makyo · 12-03-2006, 04:17 PM

Hi.

In a very real way, the inode is the file. As pixellany wrote, there are pointers to the information that is the content of the file, pointers to other structures for large files, and also all of the administrative information about the file.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inode for a good overview, and man stat for a control statement to display much of the information ... cheers, makyo

philix · 12-04-2006, 07:49 AM

Hi Drimades

File type (executable, block special etc)
Permissions (read, write etc)
Owner
Group
File Size
File access, change and modification time
File deletion time
Number of links (soft/hard)
Extended attribute (immutability)
Access Control List (ACLs)

The above information is found in the Inodes

Philix

pixellany · 12-04-2006, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by philix

Hi Drimades

File type (executable, block special etc)
Permissions (read, write etc)
Owner
Group
File Size
File access, change and modification time
File deletion time
Number of links (soft/hard)
Extended attribute (immutability)
Access Control List (ACLs)

The above information is found in the Inodes

Philix

Hmmmm---I think there also needs to be a pointer to the actual data..?
Maybe we need a tutorial on how file systems work...

matthewg42 · 12-04-2006, 09:36 AM

It depends on the filesystem type.

You should be look in the kernel Documentation directory for filesystems. For example, the ext2 filesystem file has this to say about inodes.

For the ultimate definition, you should go to the code. There is no better authority.