Monitor folder contents changes

Question

I can monitor the content changes of a file using tail -f command

Is there a similar way of monitoring the changes of a directory structure the way tail -f monitors file?

I have a long running process that adds file to a certain path under a directory and i want to track the file incomings as it(or they) write(s) to the directories and sub directories.

It sounds like you only care if the listing of the directory changes. If a file changes, you don't need the command to run. Is that correct? — Flimm, Jan 25 '23 at 13:38

score 32 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 29 '16 at 02:45

32

The inotify kernel system is what you need.

Install inotify-tools:
```
sudo apt-get install inotify-tools
```

Set up a watch:

inotifywait /path/to/directory --recursive --monitor

Sit back and watch the output.

From man inotifywait:

-m, --monitor
   Instead of exiting  after  receiving  a  single  event,  execute
   indefinitely.   The default behaviour is to exit after the first
   event occurs.
-r, --recursive
   Watch all subdirectories of any directories passed as arguments.
   Watches will be set up recursively to an unlimited depth.   Sym‐
   bolic  links  are  not  traversed.  Newly created subdirectories
   will also be watched.

You can use the --event option to watch for specific events, like creation, modification, etc.

edited Jul 29 '16 at 02:45

karel

114,770

answered Oct 24 '14 at 18:48

muru

197,895
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1

incase any one hit this problem: Failed to watch .; upper limit on inotify watches reached go here http://blog.sorah.jp/2012/01/24/inotify-limitation – johan.i.zahri Oct 25 '14 at 06:26
1

On one of my servers I discovered it is no longer called inotify-wait its just inotifywait. They must've changed the name to remove the hyphen. – Jamesking56 Oct 16 '15 at 09:02
@Jamesking56 I edited out the hyphen. – muru Oct 16 '15 at 09:06
Note, the help for inotifywait says it expects the options before the file paths. – Felix Dombek Aug 21 '19 at 16:09

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 14 '17 at 03:13

--events is not the filter, you have to use --event. For example, here's the command line for monitoring create/modify events:

# inotifywait . --recursive --monitor --event CREATE --event MODIFY

Then I see:

Setting up watches.  Beware: since -r was given, this may take a while!

And here's the format of the feed:

[path] [event] [file]

e.g.

./.mozilla/firefox/b4ar08t6.default/ MODIFY cookies.sqlite-wal
./.mozilla/firefox/b4ar08t6.default/ MODIFY cookies.sqlite-wal
./.mozilla/firefox/b4ar08t6.default/ MODIFY cookies.sqlite-wal

Monitor folder contents changes

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