What is an inode in Linux?

An inode in Linux is a data structure that stores metadata about a file but does not contain its name or content. The inode stores permissions, owner, file size, timestamps (creation, modification, access), link count, and pointers to data blocks on disk.

When a file is created, the system allocates an inode with a unique number. The filename is stored in the directory and references the inode. This allows multiple names to refer to the same inode (hard links).

Example: when running the command ls -i, you can see the inode number for each file.