>> i seem to have gotten the idea from somewhere that white-out files
>> use "inode 1" (in much the same way that empty slots use "inode 0")
>> instead of an actual inode,
> No, whiteouts are their [own] inode type.

I thought whiteouts were a special _directory entry_ type and didn't
have inodes.  It appears that whiteout entries do have 1 in the inumber
field, though, even though there is no inode 1 in the usual sense.
ufs/ufs/dinode.h excerpt:

/*
 * The Whiteout inode# is a dummy non-zero inode number which will
 * never be allocated to a real file.  It is used as a place holder
 * in the directory entry which has been tagged as a DT_W entry.
 * See the comments about ROOTINO above.
 */
#define WINO    ((ino_t)1)

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B