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4.1 File Systems

4.1.3 The inode area

The OS interprets requests to read/write/delete files by allocating inodes and data blocks. An area is set aside on each partition to store the inode table for that partition.

Inodes contain information on files and directories stored in the file system, their file permissions, link count, state and type of file, time stamps, size, and pointers to location of data blocks. The inodes do NOT contain the name of the file. An inode keeps track of its own state; whether its allocated or not.

Unix System Administration - 8 AUG 1996
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