What script to use if I want to examine .bashrc file. In other words, to know if it is in use or not?

Question

Does anyone know if it is possible to use a script for printing to the screen that .bashrc is in use or not.

I found .bashrc under home directory, but is there any script which can print the status of the file, like it is open, in use and etc.

Answer 1

There are two issues here:

• You want only to check if a file is being accessed now in any manner

• You want to monitor a file for changes, like keeping a continuous watch

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For case 1:

You can use fuser or lsof, these are the common tools for this:

lsof ~/.bashrc

or

fuser ~/.bashrc

Check man lsof and man fuser

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For case 2:

If you want to have a continuous check, Linux provides inotify family of system calls to monitor any filesystem events.

So you can add a continuous watch by the -m (--monitor) option of inotifywait:

inotifywait -m ~/.bashrc

From here, you can take actions e.g. run a command if a specific event e.g. read or write takes place.

There are also many options and use cases, take a look at man inotifywait. You might need to install inotify-tools first.

Answer 2

Read man bash, and learn that .bashrc is read, processed, and closed when a shell starts (read the man page for more detail). However, you could sudo lsof $HOME/.bashrc in a terminal window to see if any process has the file open at the moment.