Inode
Creating a table to map file references to actual physical location
When a Linux filesystem is created, its structure is specified and a table that maps file references (names) to actual physical location is created. Almost all information related to a file is stored in this table. This inode table is central to Linux. The inode table contains an entry for every file in the Linux filesystem. This entry indicates the file's actual location on the disk. The entry also contains information about the file's owner and permissions, among other things. Each file on the filesystem contains a pointer (in bytes) to the offset of the file's entry in the inode table; the OS 'jumps' the offset amount of bytes to get to the file's entry in the inode table.
Figure 1c: Inode Mapping and Linux Files
