How do inodes work?

[David Malone]

On Sun, May 16, 2004 at 02:25:37AM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> so I take there are 'gaps' in the inode list?  it doesn't re-use freed
> ones but keeps climbing until maybe it rolls around or something?

A particular numbered inode always lives in the same place on the
disk. When choosing what inode to use for a new file, the filesystem
tries to pick a inode to put the file close to the directory it is
being created in. This is the dirpref optimisation introduced a few
years ago - previously inodes were chosen from a part of a disk that
had the most nearby free space.

	David.