[TriLUG] How reliable is inotifywait?

[Scott Lambdin via TriLUG]

iNotify/incron has been around like ten years.  If you can find an active
incron message board, that would probably be a good place to look for
failure reports.

On Sun, Mar 10, 2024, 5:24 PM James Toebes via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

> Have you checked out incron?   Similar to cron,  but runs on inodes.
> You can easily define script that run when a file is added, deleted....
>
>
> On 3/10/24 18:41, Ken VanDine via TriLUG wrote:
> > In my experience it's very reliable.  We use it in Ubuntu to determine
> when
> > the display server is up before starting the installer.
> >
> >
> https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-core-desktop-installer/blob/00cb18b0b2512bb81986c6259d5561fc5a9e3976/launcher/launcher#L57
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ken
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 10, 2024, 6:09 PM Steve Litt via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> The inotifywait program waits until a specific file event happens in a
> >> specific directory or file, and then terminates. So it enables
> >> file-driven event driven programs.
> >>
> >> I'd like to wake up the instant a file appears in a directory.
> >> Something like the following:
> >>
> >> inotifywait -e create -e moved_to -t 30 /tmp/pager
> >>
> >> The preceding waits 30 seconds, except if a file is created in or moved
> >> to /tmp/pager, it quits waiting and terminates immediately.
> >>
> >> I use it to combine polling with an event driven, so if for some reason
> >> the event (moved_to or create) doesn't quit and terminate immediately,
> >> it will still quit and terminate at the end of 30 seconds.
> >>
> >> I can significantly simplify my program if I changed -t 30 to t -1,
> >> where -1 stands for "forever". False positives aren't a problem: They
> >> would just start another cycle. But false negatives, where a file is
> >> created or moved into /tmp/pager but fails to quit and terminate, would
> >> really mess me up in this particular situation.
> >>
> >> So what do you think, is inotifywait reliable?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> SteveT
> >>
> >> Steve Litt
> >>
> >> Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
> >> http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
> >> --
> >> This message was sent to: Ken VanDine <ken at vandine.org>
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