Inode number

Inode is a “database” of all file information except the file contents and the file name.
In a file system, inodes consist roughly of 1% of the total disk space, whether it is a whole storage unit (hard disk,thumb drive, etc.) 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

To find the inode numbers of the directories, you can use the command “tree -a -L 1 --inodes / 

To delete the file using the inode number, use the following command:

find ./ -inum number -exec rm -i {} \;

ls –i Journal.rtf
buse@Buse-PC:/media/buse/Norton$ ls -i ./Journal.rtf
160 ./Journal.rtf
stat –i Journal.rtf
buse@Buse-PC:/media/buse/Norton$ stat ./Journal.rtf
File: ‘./Journal.rtf’
Size: 22661 Blocks: 48 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 811h/2065d Inode: 160 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 1000/ buse) Gid: ( 1000/ buse)
Access: 2013-05-26 00:00:00.000000000 -0400
Modify: 2013-05-26 17:58:04.000000000 -0400
Change: 2013-05-26 17:58:02.180000000 -0400
Birth: -