Anatomy of stat system call

sys_stat(path, buf) {

dentry = namei(path);

if ( dentry == NULL ) return -ENOENT;

inode = dentry->d_inode;

rc =inode->i_op->i_permission(inode);

if ( rc ) return -EPERM;

rc = inode->i_op->i_getattr(inode, buf);

dput(dentry);

return rc;

}

Establish VFS data

Call into inode layer of filesystem