Editing Inode (section)

==POSIX inode description==
The [[POSIX]] standard mandates file-system behavior that is strongly influenced by traditional [[UNIX]] file systems.  An inode is denoted by the phrase "file serial number", defined as a ''per-file system'' unique identifier for a file.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_176 |title=Definitions - 3.176 File Serial Number |website=[[The Open Group]] |access-date=10 January 2018}}</ref> That file serial number, together with the device ID of the device containing the file, uniquely identify the file within the whole system.<ref name=stat />

Within a POSIX system, a file has the following attributes<ref name=stat>{{cite web |url=http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/sys/stat.h.html |title=<sys/stat.h> |website=[[The Open Group]] |access-date=15 January 2018}}</ref> which may be retrieved by the <code>stat</code> system call:
* Device ID (this identifies the device containing the file; that is, the scope of uniqueness of the serial number).
* File serial numbers.
* The [[File system permissions|file ''mode'']] which determines the file type and how the file's owner, its group, and how others can access the file.
* A [[Reference counting|link count]] telling how many [[hard link]]s point to the inode.
* The [[User identifier (Unix)|User ID]] of the file's owner.
* The [[Group identifier (Unix)|Group ID]] of the file.
* The device ID of the file if it is a [[device file]].
* The size of the file in [[byte]]s.
* [[Timestamp]]s telling when the inode itself was last modified ({{mono|ctime}}, ''inode change time''), the file content last modified ({{mono|mtime}}, ''modification time''), and last accessed ({{mono|atime}}, ''access time'').
* The preferred [[I/O]] block size.
* The number of blocks allocated to this file.