Number of times a particular file is accessed in the system since it was created

rahil khera · 03-03-2014, 08:03 AM

Does Linux stores the number of times a file is accessed from the time it was created? If yes, in which log file or data structure does it store and how to access it. I want to move least used files from one directory to another directory on the basis of count of access of files.

schneidz · 03-03-2014, 08:35 AM

i think you would have to hack something up using the stat command and creating a daemon with a loop that will stat files in a directory and store the access times in a log (and sort from most to least):

Code:

[schneidz@hyper ~]$ stat wilna.txt 
  File: `wilna.txt'
  Size: 31        	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: fd00h/64768d	Inode: 153090      Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: (  500/schneidz)   Gid: (  500/schneidz)
Context: unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0
Access: 2014-02-24 09:05:58.358434999 -0500
Modify: 2013-01-10 14:32:31.177434974 -0500
Change: 2013-01-10 14:33:01.078648009 -0500
 Birth: -

rahil khera · 03-03-2014, 08:48 AM

Sir, does Linux OS do it by itself. Like it is showing Last Access Time of the file. Similarly, does it stores number of times files has been accessed ..???

schneidz · 03-03-2014, 08:51 AM

not that i know of... thats why i suggested my hack. maybe someone who is knowledgeable will come by and suggest a better alternative.

szboardstretcher · 03-03-2014, 08:53 AM

Yeah. you'll want auditd for that.

http://security.blogoverflow.com/201...ion-to-auditd/

byau · 03-03-2014, 06:18 PM

I was going to say "dnotify" which I used years ago. Went to go find a tutorial on it and it is obsolete (showing my age am I?) - however its replacement inotify is really powerful.

Included in all recent kernels.

It will take some programming on your part but you can customize this thing to monitor specific files - powerful stuff, and not too complicated if you take time to read through the tutorials:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...buntu-inotify/