How to see information inside inode data structure
If you have a ext2/3/4 filesystem you can use debugfs
for a low-level look at an inode. For example, to play without being root:
$ truncate -s 1M myfile
$ mkfs.ext2 -F myfile
$ debugfs -w myfile
debugfs: stat <2>
Inode: 2 Type: directory Mode: 0755 Flags: 0x0
Generation: 0 Version: 0x00000000
User: 0 Group: 0 Size: 1024
File ACL: 0 Directory ACL: 0
Links: 3 Blockcount: 2
Fragment: Address: 0 Number: 0 Size: 0
ctime: 0x5722081d -- Thu Apr 28 14:54:53 2016
atime: 0x5722081d -- Thu Apr 28 14:54:53 2016
mtime: 0x5722081d -- Thu Apr 28 14:54:53 2016
BLOCKS:
(0):24
TOTAL: 1
The command stat
takes a inode number inside <>
.
You can find inode information using stat
command.
# stat myfile.txt
File: myfile.txt
Size: 2023 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd03h/64771d Inode: 15997895 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 1000/ antop) Gid: ( 1000/ antop)
Context: unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0
Access: 2019-08-30 08:29:16.974661276 +0530
Modify: 2019-08-30 08:29:16.974661276 +0530
Change: 2019-08-30 08:29:16.974661276 +0530
Birth: 2019-08-30 08:29:16.974661276 +0530
a detailed note on inode, hardlink & softlink