Veritas File System 4.1 Administrator's Guide (HP-UX 11i v3, February 2007)

File Change Log
Reverse Path Name Lookup
Chapter 8122
Reverse Path Name Lookup
The reverse path name lookup feature obtains the full path name of a file or directory from the inode number
of that file or directory. The inode number is provided as an argument to the vxlsino administrative
command, or the vxfs_inotopath application programming interface library function.
The reverse path name lookup feature can be useful for a variety of applications, such as for clients of the
VxFS file change log feature, in backup and restore utilities, and for replication products. Typically, these
applications store information by inode numbers because a path name for a file or directory can be very
long, thus the need for an easy method of obtaining a path name.
An inode is a unique identification number for each file in a file system. An inode contains the data and
metadata associated with that file, but does not include the file name to which the inode corresponds. It is
therefore relatively difficult to determine the name of a file from an inode number. The ncheck command
provides a mechanism for obtaining a file name from an inode identifier by scanning each directory in the
file system, but this process can take a long period of time. The VxFS reverse path name lookup feature
obtains path names relatively quickly.
NOTE Because symbolic links do not constitute a path to the file, the reverse path name lookup
feature cannot track symbolic links to files.
Because of the possibility of errors with processes renaming or unlinking and creating new files, it is
advisable to perform a lookup (or open) with the path name and verify that the inode number matches the
path names obtained.
See the vxlsino(1M) and vxfs_inotopath(3) online manual pages for more information.