title: The concept of Inodes and block sizes
body: <p>So I'm doing some exam review problems, and one of them states "In UNIX system V, the length of a block is 1 KB and each block can hold a total of 256 block addresses.  Using the inode scheme, what is the maximum size of the file?"</p>
  
  <p>Now the irony here is the professor's provided solutions, and I understand the math/logic behind single, double, and triple indirect allocation, it's the direct allocation that's messing me up.</p>
  
  <p>According to the solution, the direct allocation scheme uses 10 blocks, because 2^10 bytes = 1 KB.  Why?  What's the reasoning behind this formula?  Is is just some arbitrary number the inventors of the UNIX System V inode dreamed up?  Because it makes no sense to me to have 10 pointers for 1024 byes, as 1024/10 = one address every 102.4 bytes, would be much more logical to have 8 or some other number.</p>
  
  <p>The professor's hinted there may very well be a question like this on our final, and I'd rather not risk using a cookie-cutter formula I don't understand.</p>