Greetings all,

I need some sort of linux toy, script (perl or shell) or C code, that can monitor a directory to see when new files arrive. I need it to be able to send an email to a person or group of persons when the change is detected. I also need this program to be able to monitor multiple directories and be able to have a different email list for each directory monitored if I so desire. It doesn't have to be fancy, just so I can send an email to a person saying "You've got new Files", and then possible list the names of the new files in the email, but that is not a priority. Emailing is though.

I tried to look for tools that can do this, but couldn't find any to fit my needs. If anyone has suggestions, please suggest! If something needs to be written in C I would kindly ask you make the source available via GPL. After all, Linux was founded on it...


I considder myself an intermediate Linux Admin. I know shell and perl fairly well, but don't claim to know it all. I am primarily a Slackware user. I hate GUI clutter. CLI all the way! My servers don't even have KDE or X installed.

This programming help is going to be used to notify people when files are available for download on an FTP site. So, it must be flexible to be able to monitor and notify many different directories and people.

Thanks in advance.

tripwire.org is well known OSS designed to watch files for changes. I have not used it but I will be shortly when I teach myself how to use it. Other software options include http://osiris.shmoo.com and http://sourceforge.net/projects/aide/
These links are provided thanks to the Automating Unix and Linux Adminstration book.

From there, the way I email logs (thanks to a previous post) is

cat /var/log/mylog | mutt someusertonotify@pizzashack.net -s "My log file from $HOSTNAME"

I'm sure you could setup an if statement that if tripwire noticed there was a new file created, it would cat PrettyNotifyUserLetter to mutt instead of the log. If the email address that the letter was sent to was a mailing list instead of an individual user, that would take care of your group notify issues.

Hopefully some of that will get you walking in the right direction. Good luck. Sounds like a nice project. Please post your script if you get it working.