Inode table

[David Kreuter]

thanks - very informative. I'm interested as well in how the inode table 
is allocated in memory. For now I'll just consider it as an abstract table -
David

Lennart Sorensen wrote:

>On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 09:32:23PM -0500, David Kreuter wrote:
>  
>
>>A few questions on the inode table in memory. Is the inode table in 
>>contiguous memory per file system? Or is it a linked list or some other 
>>data construct? Does it matter in the sense thats it's an abstraction 
>>and could be described as a contiguous table?  Is the contruct different 
>>based on linux distro?
>>Or is it always bolted in memory from,  say, the always in core inode 
>>for root of the filesystem?
>>Different based on file system?
>>Realizing that the disk structure are different.
>>    
>>
>
>Each type of filesystem uses it's own layout for the filesystem
>metadata.  ext2 and ext3 being a bit of an exception since they share
>the majority of the disk layout, with ext3 just using an extra file in a
>special way and maintaining directories in a more strict but backwards
>compatible way.
>
>I suspect most filesystems have a continuous chunk for their inode table
>(I think that is what the superblock is for, or at least it has a
>pointer to the inode blocks if nothing else, and of course is duplicated
>multiple times on the disk, just in case.) and most of the unix type
>filesystems use cylinder groups to spread the data across the disk while
>trying to minimize file level fragmentation.
>
>The main difference between filesystems is really how they keep track of
>files and hence store that meta data in the filesystem.  Storing the
>actual data everyone does the same.  Data goes onto the disk somewhere a
>block at a time, usually cintoguous blocks if possible, and then some
>table of block numbers is stored in the meta data (in the inode is
>equivalant).  Directories are then files that store filename to inode
>mappings.  Multiple filenames can point to the same inode (hardlinks),
>and special filetypes without an inode can be created too (character and
>block devices, pipes, symlinks, etc).
>
>Not sure that really answered your question.  Hopefully it was still
>interesting.
>
>Lennart Sorensen
>--
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>  
>

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