> Perhaps this relies on a message passing OS - typically you tell the > OS (and file system indirectly) that you're interested in changes to > a particular file or directory, and you include some flags saying > what kinds of changes you are interested (iNode info, file contents, > etc). Then when the file / directory changes, the file system posts > a message with the details to the previously supplied message queue, > which the user level program is reading from.
I don't think it really relies on a message passing OS because Windows has this type of feature and it isn't a message passing OS. > You want the linux directory notification (see documentation > in linux source > tree). Its not very advanced and not very relieable, but is > the best thing > Linux provides. Thanks. I'll play with it. Unfortunately it only tells you something in the directory was changed, not what changed. This sucks. I won't know what changed and to find out I'd have to maintain a hash table of every inode in the filesystem and do a comparison. Yuck. I'll try it though. By the way, what do you mean it isn't very reliable? Scott