inotifywait doesn't catch a modify, but does register a attrib change
 

First time working with inotifywait from inotify-tools. I wanted to detect when XFCE changes the display configuration:
The line above waits indefinitely though, even when I can confirm the file has changed. Running without specifying "-qq -e modify" works, but prints ATTRIB. Apparently on the grounds of catching an attribute change i.e. the modification date it can detect a change.
Is this expected, and do I not understand the program? Or is it some quirk in my setup, like my file systems (NTFS)?

You're using NTFS on a Linux system? Or is the home directory perhaps on a Windows system and mounted via CIFS/SMB?

I should have explained. It is a "temporary" workaround for a PEBCAK issue. Home is on a Windows readable partition. All my ext partitions are mounted with noatime. I have no idea whether that is relevant, so I thought it would be best to limit the problem to the specific case, and ask for general information.
The inotify manual says the underlying system doesn't track changes made using mmap an msync instead of read and write. Will look into this.