What is inode number ?

An inode is a data structure on a traditional Unix-style file system such as UFS or ext3. An

inode stores basic information about a regular file, directory, or other file system object

iNode number also called as index number, it consists following attributes:

File type (executable, block special etc)

Permissions (read, write etc)

Owner

Group

File Size

File access, change and modification time (remember UNIX or Linux never stores file creation

time, this is favorite question asked in UNIX/Linux sys admin job interview)

File deletion time

Number of links (soft/hard)

Extended attribute such as append only or no one can delete file including root user

(immutability)

Access Control List (ACLs)

Following command will be used to show inodes of file and folders:

ls -i

Following command will show complete info about any file or folders with inode number

stat file/folder

Files/Folders can also be deleted using inode numbers with following command:

find out the inode number using ‘ls -il’ command then run below command

find . -inum inode_number -exec rm -i {} \;