Inode is a data structure that keeps track of all the information about a file. When we keep our information in a file and the OS stores the information about a file in an inode. Information about files is sometimes called metadata. We can say that an inode is metadata of the data. In a file system, inodes consist roughly of 1% of the total disk space, whether it is a whole storage unit or a partition on a storage unit. The inode space is used to ?track? the files stored on the hard disk. The inode entries store metadata about each file, directory or object, but only points to these structures rather than storing the data. Each entry is 128 bytes in size. The metadata contained about each structure can include the following:
Inode number
Access Control List (ACL)
Extended attribute
Direct/indirect disk blocks
Number of blocks
File access, change and modification time
File deletion time
File generation number
File size
File type
Group
Number of links
Owner
Permissions
Status flags
Inode structure of a directory consists of a name to inode mapping of files and directories in that directory.In a directory, You can find the inode number corresponding to the files using the command "ls -i"
786727 -rw------- 1 root root 4226530 May 29 13:17 sudo.log
786437 -rw-------. 1 root root 32640 Jun 23 20:11 tallylog
786440 -rw-rw-r--. 1 root utmp 276096 Jul 20 06:45 wtmp
786741 -rw------- 1 root root 9653 Jul 17 09:38 yum.log
Similar way, the number of inodes allocated, used and free in a Filesystem can be listed using "df -i" command
