Monitoring File/Directory changes in Linux

FILESCHANGED - This software is a client to FAM (File Alteration Monitor) servers (FAM, Gamin) that is now available in some distributions. Here's how the fileschanged FAM client works: you give it some filenames on the command line and then it monitors those files for changes. When it discovers that a file has been altered, it displays the filename on the standard-output. visit

FAM - File Alteration Monitor - FAM, the File Alteration Monitor, provides an API that applications can use to be notified when specific files or directories are changed.

FAM comes in two parts: fam, the daemon that listens for requests and delivers notification, and libfam, a library that client applications can use to communicate with fam
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GAMIN -

Gamin is a file and directory monitoring system defined to be a subset of the FAM (File Alteration Monitor) system.

The main goals of the project are:

1. minimize the security model of FAM, the daemon runs under the user account, it is compatible with SELinux
2. simplify the code base, dropping some of the most exotic feature of FAM
3. provide an API and ABI compatible replacement for FAM
4. try to fix some other issues like resource consumption

Gamin also serves as an interface to test the inotify mechanism to improve the existing dnotify monitoring interface present in the Linux kernel.

At this point Gamin is fairly tied to Linux, portability is not a primary goal at this stage but if you have portability patches they are welcome. visit

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Looks like this is a good starting point for learning how to use FAM.