[lug] How to monitor directory changes from a shell?

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:45:27 -0700
pjr at ucar.edu (Phil Rasch) wrote:

> I need to employ a simple mechanism from within a shell script that
> will notify the script when a directory changes status. Ideally the
> script would call a utility that will "pause" until the directory has
> something written to it. When the directory changes, the utility would
> react by quitting, and return control to the script.

Take a look at 'inotify'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify

Basically this allows you to have the kernel notify you when something
happens to a file or directory. 

I haven't used the inotify-tools that are referenced on the above link,
but I have played around with 'incron':
http://inotify.aiken.cz/?section=incron&page=about&lang=en
which is very super cool. 

Basically it's a cron like setup, where you tell it: if this file or
directory operation happens on this file or directory, run this
command. 

incron is available now in fedora. Not sure about other distros. 

kevin
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