Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!yuf
From: yuf@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Kyle Grieser)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: inode #1
Keywords: file systems, root inode
Message-ID: <2380@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 14 Apr 89 19:04:51 GMT
References: <352@anvil.oz>
Reply-To: yuf@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Kyle Grieser)
Organization: PUCC UNIX Group
Lines: 16

In article <352@anvil.oz> michi@anvil.oz (Michael Henning) writes:
>I just did a "find / -inum 1 -print" on an AIX and a Xenix 386 system. As
>it turns out, inode 1 is not used. The root inode of every file system is 2.
>Can anyone tell me why inode 1 is not used anywhere ?  It seems that it
>could be used, since if 0 indicates that a directory entry is free, why
>not use inode 1 like any other inode ?

	The comments given in /usr/include/sys/fs.h answer this question
pretty well if you wish to browse.  Inode 1 is not used for historical
purposes.  Inode 1 used to have bad blocks linked to it.  It is no longer
used for this, but some things assume that it is still true.  Thus,
the root inode is still #2.

-----
Kyle Grieser
mentor.cc.purdue.edu!yuf, yuf@mentor.cc.purdue.edu