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NAME
inotify - monitoring filesystem events
DESCRIPTION
The inotify API provides a mechanism for monitoring filesystem events. Inotify can be
used to monitor individual files, or to monitor directories. When a directory is
monitored, inotify will return events for the directory itself, and for files inside the
directory.
The following system calls are used with this API: inotify_init(2) (or inotify_init1(2)),
inotify_add_watch(2), inotify_rm_watch(2), read(2), and close(2).
inotify_init(2) creates an inotify instance and returns a file descriptor referring to the
inotify instance. The more recent inotify_init1(2) is like inotify_init(2), but provides
some extra functionality.
inotify_add_watch(2) manipulates the "watch list" associated with an inotify instance.
Each item ("watch") in the watch list specifies the pathname of a file or directory, along
with some set of events that the kernel should monitor for the file referred to by that
pathname. inotify_add_watch(2) either creates a new watch item, or modifies an existing
watch. Each watch has a unique "watch descriptor", an integer returned by
inotify_add_watch(2) when the watch is created.
inotify_rm_watch(2) removes an item from an inotify watch list.
When all file descriptors referring to an inotify instance have been closed, the
underlying object and its resources are freed for reuse by the kernel; all associated
watches are automatically freed.
To determine what events have occurred, an application read(2)s from the inotify file
descriptor. If no events have so far occurred, then, assuming a blocking file descriptor,
read(2) will block until at least one event occurs (unless interrupted by a signal, in
which case the call fails with the error EINTR; see signal(7)).
Each successful read(2) returns a buffer containing one or more of the following
structures:
struct inotify_event {
int wd; /* Watch descriptor */
uint32_t mask; /* Mask of events */
uint32_t cookie; /* Unique cookie associating related
events (for rename(2)) */
uint32_t len; /* Size of name field */
char name[]; /* Optional null-terminated name */
};
wd identifies the watch for which this event occurs. It is one of the watch descriptors
returned by a previous call to inotify_add_watch(2).
mask contains bits that describe the event that occurred (see below).
cookie is a unique integer that connects related events. Currently this is used only for
rename events, and allows the resulting pair of IN_MOVED_FROM and IN_MOVED_TO events to be
connected by the application. For all other event types, cookie is set to 0.
The name field is present only when an event is returned for a file inside a watched
directory; it identifies the file pathname relative to the watched directory. This
pathname is null-terminated, and may include further null bytes ('\0') to align subsequent
reads to a suitable address boundary.
The len field counts all of the bytes in name, including the null bytes; the length of
each inotify_event structure is thus sizeof(struct inotify_event)+len.
The behavior when the buffer given to read(2) is too small to return information about the
next event depends on the kernel version: in kernels before 2.6.21, read(2) returns 0;
since kernel 2.6.21, read(2) fails with the error EINVAL. Specifying a buffer of size
sizeof(struct inotify_event) + NAME_MAX + 1
will be sufficient to read at least one event.
inotify events
The inotify_add_watch(2) mask argument and the mask field of the inotify_event structure
returned when read(2)ing an inotify file descriptor are both bit masks identifying inotify
events. The following bits can be specified in mask when calling inotify_add_watch(2) and
may be returned in the mask field returned by read(2):
IN_ACCESS File was accessed (read) (*).
IN_ATTRIB Metadata changed, e.g., permissions, timestamps, extended
attributes, link count (since Linux 2.6.25), UID, GID, etc. (*).
IN_CLOSE_WRITE File opened for writing was closed (*).
IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE File not opened for writing was closed (*).
IN_CREATE File/directory created in watched directory (*).
IN_DELETE File/directory deleted from watched directory (*).
IN_DELETE_SELF Watched file/directory was itself deleted.
IN_MODIFY File was modified (*).
IN_MOVE_SELF Watched file/directory was itself moved.
IN_MOVED_FROM Generated for the directory containing the old filename when a file
is renamed (*).
IN_MOVED_TO Generated for the directory containing the new filename when a file
is renamed (*).
IN_OPEN File was opened (*).
When monitoring a directory, the events marked with an asterisk (*) above can occur for
files in the directory, in which case the name field in the returned inotify_event
structure identifies the name of the file within the directory.
The IN_ALL_EVENTS macro is defined as a bit mask of all of the above events. This macro
can be used as the mask argument when calling inotify_add_watch(2).
Two additional convenience macros are IN_MOVE, which equates to IN_MOVED_FROM|IN_MOVED_TO,
and IN_CLOSE, which equates to IN_CLOSE_WRITE|IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE.
The following further bits can be specified in mask when calling inotify_add_watch(2):
IN_DONT_FOLLOW (since Linux 2.6.15)
Don't dereference pathname if it is a symbolic link.
IN_EXCL_UNLINK (since Linux 2.6.36)
By default, when watching events on the children of a directory,
events are generated for children even after they have been unlinked
from the directory. This can result in large numbers of
uninteresting events for some applications (e.g., if watching /tmp,
in which many applications create temporary files whose names are
immediately unlinked). Specifying IN_EXCL_UNLINK changes the
default behavior, so that events are not generated for children
after they have been unlinked from the watched directory.
IN_MASK_ADD Add (OR) events to watch mask for this pathname if it already exists
(instead of replacing mask).
IN_ONESHOT Monitor pathname for one event, then remove from watch list.
IN_ONLYDIR (since Linux 2.6.15)
Only watch pathname if it is a directory.
The following bits may be set in the mask field returned by read(2):
IN_IGNORED Watch was removed explicitly (inotify_rm_watch(2)) or automatically
(file was deleted, or filesystem was unmounted).
IN_ISDIR Subject of this event is a directory.
IN_Q_OVERFLOW Event queue overflowed (wd is -1 for this event).
IN_UNMOUNT Filesystem containing watched object was unmounted.
/proc interfaces
The following interfaces can be used to limit the amount of kernel memory consumed by
inotify:
/proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_queued_events
The value in this file is used when an application calls inotify_init(2) to set an
upper limit on the number of events that can be queued to the corresponding inotify
instance. Events in excess of this limit are dropped, but an IN_Q_OVERFLOW event
is always generated.
/proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_instances
This specifies an upper limit on the number of inotify instances that can be
created per real user ID.
/proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches
This specifies an upper limit on the number of watches that can be created per real
user ID.
VERSIONS
Inotify was merged into the 2.6.13 Linux kernel. The required library interfaces were
added to glibc in version 2.4. (IN_DONT_FOLLOW, IN_MASK_ADD, and IN_ONLYDIR were added in
version 2.5.)
CONFORMING TO
The inotify API is Linux-specific.
NOTES
Inotify file descriptors can be monitored using select(2), poll(2), and epoll(7). When an
event is available, the file descriptor indicates as readable.
Since Linux 2.6.25, signal-driven I/O notification is available for inotify file
descriptors; see the discussion of F_SETFL (for setting the O_ASYNC flag), F_SETOWN, and
F_SETSIG in fcntl(2). The siginfo_t structure (described in sigaction(2)) that is passed
to the signal handler has the following fields set: si_fd is set to the inotify file
descriptor number; si_signo is set to the signal number; si_code is set to POLL_IN; and
POLLIN is set in si_band.
If successive output inotify events produced on the inotify file descriptor are identical
(same wd, mask, cookie, and name) then they are coalesced into a single event if the older
event has not yet been read (but see BUGS).
The events returned by reading from an inotify file descriptor form an ordered queue.
Thus, for example, it is guaranteed that when renaming from one directory to another,
events will be produced in the correct order on the inotify file descriptor.
The FIONREAD ioctl(2) returns the number of bytes available to read from an inotify file
descriptor.
Limitations and caveats
Inotify monitoring of directories is not recursive: to monitor subdirectories under a
directory, additional watches must be created. This can take a significant amount time
for large directory trees.
The inotify API provides no information about the user or process that triggered the
inotify event. In particular, there is no easy way for a process that is monitoring
events via inotify to distinguish events that it triggers itself from those that are
triggered by other processes.
Note that the event queue can overflow. In this case, events are lost. Robust
applications should handle the possibility of lost events gracefully.
The inotify API identifies affected files by filename. However, by the time an
application processes an inotify event, the filename may already have been deleted or
renamed.
If monitoring an entire directory subtree, and a new subdirectory is created in that tree,
be aware that by the time you create a watch for the new subdirectory, new files may
already have been created in the subdirectory. Therefore, you may want to scan the
contents of the subdirectory immediately after adding the watch.
BUGS
In kernels before 2.6.16, the IN_ONESHOT mask flag does not work.
Before kernel 2.6.25, the kernel code that was intended to coalesce successive identical
events (i.e., the two most recent events could potentially be coalesced if the older had
not yet been read) instead checked if the most recent event could be coalesced with the
oldest unread event.
SEE ALSO
inotifywait(1), inotifywatch(1), inotify_add_watch(2), inotify_init(2), inotify_init1(2),
inotify_rm_watch(2), read(2), stat(2)
Documentation/filesystems/inotify.txt in the Linux kernel source tree
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.54 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the
project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.