Inodes concept in Linux CLI - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding Inodes in Linux

📖 Scenario: You are learning how Linux stores information about files using inodes. Each file has an inode that holds metadata like file size, permissions, and location on disk. Understanding inodes helps you manage files better.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to check inode numbers of files and count files using inode-related commands in Linux.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use the ls -i command to list files with their inode numbers

Create a directory and files inside it

Use the find command to count files by inode

Display the inode number of a specific file

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Understanding inodes helps in file system management, troubleshooting disk space issues, and recovering files.

💼 Career

System administrators and developers use inode knowledge to manage Linux servers and optimize storage.

1

Create a directory and files

Create a directory called myfiles and inside it create two empty files named file1.txt and file2.txt using the mkdir and touch commands.

Linux CLI

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use mkdir myfiles to create the folder, then cd myfiles to enter it, and touch file1.txt file2.txt to create the files.

2

List files with inode numbers

Use the ls -i command inside the myfiles directory to list the files along with their inode numbers.

Linux CLI

mkdir myfiles
cd myfiles
touch file1.txt file2.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Run ls -i to see inode numbers next to each file name.

3

Find and count files by inode

Use the find . -inum command to find files by their inode number. First, get the inode number of file1.txt using ls -i file1.txt, then use find . -inum [inode_number] to find it. Replace [inode_number] with the actual number.

Linux CLI

mkdir myfiles
cd myfiles
touch file1.txt file2.txt
ls -i
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use command substitution to store the inode number, then use find . -inum with that number.

4

Display inode number of a file

Print the inode number of file2.txt using the ls -i file2.txt command.

Linux CLI

mkdir myfiles
cd myfiles
touch file1.txt file2.txt
ls -i
inode=$(ls -i file1.txt | cut -d' ' -f1)
find . -inum $inode
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use ls -i file2.txt to show its inode number and file name.