Linux – An introduction to inodes

In Linux, file system is uses i-nodes called index nodes to keep the information of the files or directories. Each file or directory in Linux file system has an associated inode. Each inode is unique. Depending on the file system setup, we can have maximum number of inodes.

inode is nothing but a structure to keep the information of the file or directory or link in the Linux file system. It has the meta data information about the file or directory, like; size, date modified, permissions etc.,.

We can use below command from the terminal window in Linux Operating System to display the inode of each file;

ls -i

Sometimes, it is required to know the total number of inodes of the server. Then we can use the below command;

df -i

The result looks like below, shows the inodes in the Server;

root@---:~# df -i
Filesystem     Inodes IUsed  IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sdb            0     0      0     - /
none           504299    26 504273    1% /dev
udev           501883   475 501408    1% /dev/tty
...

// Malin