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Questions[inotify](ubuntu)

Martin Hope
Kurt
Asked: 2021-07-16 22:33:46 +0800 CST
  • 1

I'm using inotifywait to keep track of events on a single file (instead of a directory), as

$ inotifywait -m -e open -e close -e move myfile.txt

When I open and edit the file, the logs are printed as expected.

Setting up watches.
Watches established.
myfile.txt OPEN 
myfile.txt CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE

But inotify never emits either MOVED_IN, MOVED_FROM events (not even DELETE_SELF) when I rename the file. On the other hand, if I watch the directory containing myfile.txt, rather than a single file, the events are emitted as usual.

One strange point to me is that, opening and closing the renamed file still log events.

myfile.txt OPEN 
myfile.txt CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE

At this point, my file is not myfile.txt but has another name. Notably, inotify does not track any event evoked working with a newly created myfile.txt.

My questions are:

  1. How can I correctly track the "renaming" events of a single file with inotifywait, while not watching a full directory?

  2. How can I get the current name of a single file watched? --format "%f" option seems to always print the original file name passed to inotifywait even though the file is renamed, as shown above.

  3. I'm looking for a sort of "rename history logger" that works for a given set of files scattered in the filesystem. Are there any alternatives to inotify, which can be used for this specific purpose?

inotify
Martin Hope
DK Bose
Asked: 2019-09-01 05:50:00 +0800 CST
  • 2

I'm trying to learn about inotifywait. I installed inotify-tools:

Start-Date: 2019-08-31  18:11:48
Commandline: apt install inotify-tools
Requested-By: dkb (1000)
Install: inotify-tools:amd64 (3.14-7), libinotifytools0:amd64 (3.14-7, automatic)
End-Date: 2019-08-31  18:11:58

I made this script, jl.sh, to copy any modified file in ~/Desktop/vvtemp over to ~/Public and to timestamp the copied file:

#!/bin/bash
dir_to_watch="/home/dkb/Desktop/vvtemp/"

inotifywait -m -e modify --format '%w%f' "${dir_to_watch}" | while read line
do
s=$line
     newname=/home/dkb/Public/$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)"-${s##*/}"
     cp $line $newname
done

 

  • I created a file called test.txt and started the script in one terminal. There were no errors or warnings.

  • In another terminal, I opened test.txt with nano, edited it, saved it and closed it just the one time.

  • Then I edited the same file using gedit and geany

I looked at the listing of files in the target folder, ~/Public:

dkb@Udin:~/Public$ ll
total 36
drwxr-xr-x  2 dkb dkb 4096 Aug 31 18:27 ./
drwxr-xr-x 17 dkb dkb 4096 Aug 31 18:08 ../
-rw-r--r--  1 dkb dkb 1024 Aug 31 18:24 20190831182416-.test.txt.swp
-rw-r--r--  1 dkb dkb 1024 Aug 31 18:24 20190831182419-.test.txt.swp
-rw-r--r--  1 dkb dkb  159 Aug 31 18:24 20190831182441-test.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 dkb dkb  179 Aug 31 18:26 20190831182619-.goutputstream-QN1A7Z
-rw-r--r--  1 dkb dkb  198 Aug 31 18:26 20190831182638-.goutputstream-UDEB7Z
-rw-r--r--  1 dkb dkb  210 Aug 31 18:27 20190831182722-.goutputstream-0X2K7Z
-rw-r--r--  1 dkb dkb  221 Aug 31 18:27 20190831182733-.goutputstream-01D86Z
dkb@Udin:~/Public$

  • The first three files are related to editing and saving test.txt with nano. The first two files have a .swp suffix. The third file is the intended file with the intended timestamped filename.

  • Then I tried editing the same file with gedit or geany. These editors created the backup files, one for each time I modified and saved the file, but the resulting backups, although they had the intended content, had filenames like 20190831182733-.goutputstream-01D86Z. So it seems that the timestamp is honored but the "basename" isn't.

 

My questions are:

  • why are two .swp files created by inotifywait when I use nano?

  • why isn't the intended name generated when I use gedit or geany?

scripts command-line bash inotify
Martin Hope
current_user
Asked: 2018-08-24 03:35:50 +0800 CST
  • 2

I have a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 2.6.32-042stab127.2 x86_64) VPS I am getting the following error while running my rails application

FATAL: Listen error: unable to monitor directories for changes. Visit https://github.com/guard/listen/wiki/Increasing-the-amount-of-inotify-watchers for info on how to fix this.

I'm trying to fix that by increasing the watch limit by 

  $ echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
  $ sudo sysctl -p

it is throwing another error as

sysctl: permission denied on key 'fs.inotify.max_user_watches'

I have root access to the server.

Any Help to increase the limit is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

server 16.04 inotify
Martin Hope
fixit7
Asked: 2018-01-11 10:33:15 +0800 CST
  • 5

I made a script to invoke inotifywait. It works fine, but I sometimes want to stop it.

How do I stop the last inotifywait instance?

I cannot understand how to use inotify_rm_watch which I understand is used to close it.

7341 ?        S      0:00 inotifywait -m /home/andy/Downloads/ --format %w
inotify
Martin Hope
Mark Amery
Asked: 2016-01-04 10:06:47 +0800 CST
  • 5

Some software that I'm using needs a higher-than-default value in /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches. I can modify this value with a text editor or from the terminal, and for a little while, everything is fine. However, after restarting my computer (not just logging out and in again, which works fine), the value has reset to 8192.

Why does this happen, and how can I make the change permanent?

inotify