A data structure holding information about files in a Unixfile system. There is an inode for each file and a file is uniquely identified by the file system on which it resides and its inode number on that system. Each inode contains the following information: the device where the inode resides, locking information, mode and type of file, the number of links to the file, the owner' s user and group IDs, the number of bytes in the file, access and modification times, the time the inode itself was last modified and the addresses of the file' s blocks on disk. A Unix directory is an association between file leafnames and inode numbers. A file' s inode number can be found using the "-i" switch to ls. Unix manual page: fs(5). See also /usr/include/ufs/inode.h.