File control blocks and the inode cache

• Each file has a control block, with information such as file size, last modification time, last access time, access permissions...
• Since traveling a path requires checking permissions and file-types, the file control blocks are cached in the inode cache.
  • inode is the name of the object, on disk, that contains the file control-block.
• Each dentry points to a matching entry in the inode-cache, allowing the path traversal code to quickly check for access permissions.

Originally written by guy keren