File alteration monitoring techniques under Linux
In a multi-user, multi-process operating system, files are continually
being created, modified, and deleted, often by apparently unrelated
processes. This means that any software that needs to keep aware of
what is happening in a filesystem needs to employ a file monitoring
technique.Monitoring, in this sense, means keeping a watch over a set of files,
waiting for any of them to change. Applications that benefit from
monitoring techniques include those that need to keep their displayed filesystem information up to date, long-running server tools that
should automatically reread their configuration files when those files
change, applications that watch for and respond to unusual file
modifications, system message file monitors, and so on.