[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“At any given time, a Linux machine will be having 10’s and
1000’s of files including both system as well as user files. File
systems like ext2 or ext3 support file names of 255 characters
length and can grow in sizes of up to 2 GB. Now managing these
files and keeping track of which files contain what data could be a
nightmare for any OS. To overcome this logistical nightmare, Linux
uses what are called i-nodes to organise block allocations to
files.“Each file in Linux irrespective of its type, has a unique
identity by way of an i-node number associated with it. No two
different files can have the same i-node number…”