NAME

       famd - The File Alteration Monitor (FAM) daemon

SYNOPSIS

       famd [-CdflLv] [-C conffile] [-p prog.vers] [-t period] [-T timeout]

DESCRIPTION

       FAM,  the  File Alteration Monitor, is a subsystem that applications can use to be notified when specific
       files or directories are changed.  It is intended as a  replacement  for  mechanisms  such  as  poll  and
       select.

       FAM comes in two parts: famd, the daemon that listens for requests and provides notifications, and libfam
       a  library  that client applications can use to communicate with FAM.  For further information on libfam,
       see the fam(3) manual page.

       famd is normally started by an Internet superserver such as inetd or xinetd,  but  can  also  be  started
       independently.  Only one instance of famd can be run at a time.

       famd can be configured by editing the famd configuration file (see fam.conf(5) for further details) or by
       providing the following command line options:

OPTIONS

       -c conffile
              Read configuration information from conffile.

       -C     Run in backwards compatibilty mode.  This is disables authentication and is not recommended.

       -f     Run in the foreground.

       -v     Enable verbose messages.

       -d     Enable verbose messages and debug messages.

       -l     Disable polling of files on remote NFS servers.

       -L     Only accept connections from local clients.

       -r     Detect read-only filesystems.

       -p prog.vers
              Register with the portmapper using the specifed RPC program and version numbers.

       -P port
              Bind to the specified TCP port instead of choosing at random.

       -t period
              Poll  a  remove NFS server every period seconds to obtain file updates if the remove server is not
              running famd.

       -T timeout
              Exit timeout seconds after the last client disconnects.  A value of 0 causes famd to run forever.

SECURITY

       famd never opens the files it's monitoring, and only monitors files that the client can stat.

FILES

       /etc/fam.conf
              Default famd configuration file.

SEE ALSO

       fam(3), fam.conf(5), inetd(8), portmap(8), stat(1), xinetd(8)

BUGS

famd (fam 2.6.10)                               January 19, 2003                                         FAMD(8)