Concepts
- File components
- Name - label of the file
- Metadata - size, permissions, owner, timestamps, and data block pointers
- Data - actual bytes on disk
- Inode (index node) - structure containing file metadata
- Every file and directory has exactly one inode identified by a unique number
- Inode does not contain the filename
- File creation creates an inode and a directory entry
- Directory entry - link mapping a filename to an inode number
- Directory - list of directory entries
How it works
- Kernel looks up filename in current directory to get inode number (example: 84213)
- Kernel reads inode to find data block locations
- Kernel reads blocks and prints contents
