INODE Explained

INODE – Index Node (Also called as Index Number) is the basic and fundamental concept in Linux filesystem.

Each file in Linux has following attributes,

• File type (executable, block special or character special etc)
• Permissions (read, write, execute)
• Owner
• Group
• File Size
• File access, change and modification time
• File deletion time
• Number of links (soft/hard)
• Extended attribute (Like no one can delete/append only..)
• Access Control List (ACLs)

All the above information is stored in inode & every file has unique inode value in filesystem which identifies the file attributes.

We can get the inode value by ls & stat command

Note :

Remember that Linux never stores the file creation time.