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

incron is a useful tool for the operations like this. You may create a configuration file for the directory or file that you want to watch.

http://inotify.aiken.cz/?section=incron&page=about&lang=en

in ubuntu

sudo apt-get install incron

/etc/incron.d/mynotification.conf

# notification for user creation
/home IN_ALL_EVENTS /opt/notify_user_created.sh $#

Answer 2

You should use a library instead of inotify and friends - something like FAM or Gamin (it's the same API for both). This will make your program portable to other Unixes.

Answer 3

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 Both of them use inotify as first option over the outdated dnotify and polls.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.