MadSci Network: Computer Science
Query:

Re: what is a inode,what is its functionality ,what does it do

Date: Thu Nov 11 18:07:21 1999
Posted By: Mike Westerfield, Staff, Computer Science, Byte Works, Inc.
Area of science: Computer Science
ID: 941749773.Cs
Message:

Unix and Unix-like operating systems don’t really access files by name, the 
way you do when you type a name in the shell. The path name you use is 
looked up in a directory. Once it is resolved, you might expect that the 
result would be the file, or perhaps information about all of the various 
places on a disk where the file is actually stored. In fact, what you get 
after looking up the name of a file is a number. This number is called the 
inode number, and the inode number is really how the operating system refers 
to the file. Just as a variable name in, say, C really gets translated into 
an address that the computer really uses to find the value, a file name gets 
converted to an inode number that is really used to find information about 
the file.

Once it has the inode number, the operating system knows how to find a 
structure that contains more information about the file, like the chunks of 
the disk called blocks where the information in the file is actually stored. 
This structure is also called the inode.

References:
   
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may96/831498897.Cs.r.html
   
http://mm.iit.uni-miskolc.hu/Data/texts/Linux/SAG/node78.html#figext2fsinode 
   
http://mm.iit.uni-miskolc.hu/Data/texts/Linux/SAG/node79.html#SECTION001032000000000000000 




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