Best way to monitor file system changes in linux

Question

I\'m looking at building a file system sync utility that monitors file system activity, but it appears that some of the file system monitoring features in the linux kernel a

Answer 1

There's a good lib providing file descriptors or process with inotify. It has his own C API and the inotifywatch util (good for scripts), all in inotify-tools package.

• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-ubuntu-inotify/index.html
• http://www.infoq.com/articles/inotify-linux-file-system-event-monitoring

I strongly disagree that fanotify will outdate inotify.

FAM and gamin are very good server/client options. Both of them use inotify as first option over the outdated dnotify and polls. I prefer gamin.