People have run into a problem when they do this:
watch (file1, all_events);
watch (file2, some_events);
if file2 is a hard link to file1, some events will be missed because by
default we replace the mask. The patch below adds a flag IN_MASK_ADD which
will cause inotify to add to the existing mask if present.
Signed-off-by: John McCutchan <ttb@tentacle.dhs.org>
Signed-off-by: Robert Love <rml@novell.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
This adds a MOVE_SELF event to inotify. It is sent whenever the inode
you are watching is moved. We need this event so that we can catch
something like this:
- app1:
watch /etc/mtab
- app2:
cp /etc/mtab /tmp/mtab-work
mv /etc/mtab /etc/mtab~
mv /tmp/mtab-work /etc/mtab
app1 still thinks it's watching /etc/mtab but it's actually watching
/etc/mtab~.
Signed-off-by: John McCutchan <ttb@tentacle.dhs.org>
Signed-off-by: Robert Love <rml@novell.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
inotify is intended to correct the deficiencies of dnotify, particularly
its inability to scale and its terrible user interface:
* dnotify requires the opening of one fd per each directory
that you intend to watch. This quickly results in too many
open files and pins removable media, preventing unmount.
* dnotify is directory-based. You only learn about changes to
directories. Sure, a change to a file in a directory affects
the directory, but you are then forced to keep a cache of
stat structures.
* dnotify's interface to user-space is awful. Signals?
inotify provides a more usable, simple, powerful solution to file change
notification:
* inotify's interface is a system call that returns a fd, not SIGIO.
You get a single fd, which is select()-able.
* inotify has an event that says "the filesystem that the item
you were watching is on was unmounted."
* inotify can watch directories or files.
Inotify is currently used by Beagle (a desktop search infrastructure),
Gamin (a FAM replacement), and other projects.
See Documentation/filesystems/inotify.txt.
Signed-off-by: Robert Love <rml@novell.com>
Cc: John McCutchan <ttb@tentacle.dhs.org>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
