Using inode number to locate hardlinks

Question

How can I use the inode number to locate all hardlinks to the file "file.txt" in my home directory?

Answer 1

To find all files in your home directory with inode number N, use either

find ~ -maxdepth 1 -inum N

(home directory only) or

find ~ -xdev -inum N

(includes subdirectories).

The switch -xdev prevents finding files with the same inode number on different file systems, since they're not the hardlinks we're looking for.

To find all hardlinks to file.txt, you can use

find -inum "$(stat -c %i file.txt)"

with or without the -maxdepth switch.

See:

• man find
• man stat