inode #1

[Kyle Grieser]

In article <352 at anvil.oz> michi at 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 at mentor.cc.purdue.edu