inotify-tools

inotify-tools is a handy set of command-line utilities designed for the Linux inotify filesystem change notification system. It helps you keep an eye on file changes, which is super useful for monitoring logs or any important files!

How to Use inotify-tools

Alright, so let’s say you want to create a simple inotify command line utility. You can call it from your shell scripts like this:

#!/bin/sh

    while { inotifywait -e modify /var/log/messages; }; do

    echo "Log modified!"

    # Do some relevant command here

    done

This method is probably one of the most efficient ways to watch for changes on a file using a shell script. If you're curious about more options, check out 'inotifywait -help'.

Catching Events with inotify-tools

If you don’t specify which event you want to catch, it will pick up everything that happens! The event that occurs gets printed out on stdout. Here’s an example:

#!/bin/sh

    EVENT=`inotifywait ~/file1`

    [ $? = 0 ] && exit

    [ "$EVENT" = "MODIFY" ] && echo "file modified!"

    [ "$EVENT" = "DELETE_SELF" ] && echo "file deleted!"

    # etc...

In this case, inotifywait returns true if an event you asked for is caught. But if an event you didn't ask for happens, it returns false. This usually happens if you listen to a file on a partition and then unmount that partition or if the file gets deleted before the event occurs.

What's New in This Release?

This latest version fixes a bug that caused some command line options to be ignored. So now it's running smoother than ever!

If you're ready to dive into using inotify-tools, make sure to check out the download page at Softpas.com.