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All About inodes, Hard Links and Soft Links

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Web Webster
Web Webster
Mar 30, 2013

Open your terminal and fire “ls -i” and you will see that each file is associated with a number.
$ ls -i
2889973 users.sh 2889972 fedoraRepo.sh 2889970 sfs.sh
2889969 bigFile.sh 2889971 dbBackup.sh 2889714 tree-clone.py

Ever wondered what this number is?
Ever thought what happens when a file is deleted?
How does the system knows the owner of the file or it’s last modification time?
What are hard links?
What is the difference between hard links and soft links?

I’ll try to answer these questions and probably more

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Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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