wait and continue if directory stays same size

robertkwild · 04-25-2016, 10:37 AM

hi all,

i want to make a bash script so it can monitor directory sizes ie if it stays the same size (for a certain time) i want it to run the script but if there still copying and the directory increases in size do not run the script

i have heard "inotifywait" can do this?

cheers,

rob

HMW · 04-25-2016, 10:47 AM

Hi!

inotify might work, also check out watch:

Code:

man watch

[...]

EXAMPLES
       To watch for mail, you might do

              watch -n 60 from

       To watch the contents of a directory change, you could use

              watch -d ls -l

[...]

michaelk · 04-25-2016, 11:38 AM

Yes, in a nutshell inotifywait will monitor a directory for file events i.e create, open, write, close etc. Normally by default it will wait forever for an event to happen but you can set a timeout value so it should be possible to create a script to handle your task. Might have to work out a few conditional checks since writing large files could be problematic.

robertkwild · 04-25-2016, 03:40 PM

whats better -

watch

inotifywait

inotifywatch

michaelk · 04-25-2016, 04:21 PM

My preference would be inotifywait but maybe others have a better idea.

robertkwild · 04-25-2016, 04:31 PM

will this work, if i put it in an if statement -

inotifywait -mrq -e access,modify,close,open,create,delete -t 180 /to_be_archived/"$DIR"

genss · 04-25-2016, 06:01 PM

directory size as in the number of things in the directory or the total on-disk size of the things in the inventory ?

monitor can not be used with a timeout

but it will work without it, as you only care if something is happening not how much of it

robertkwild · 04-27-2016, 04:35 AM

i did this but it doesnt work over NFS, i will have to use the du command with some variables in it

inotifywait -rq -e modify,create,delete -t 60 /vol/cha-work/to_be_archived/audio/auto_archive/

michaelk · 04-27-2016, 04:51 AM

That is correct ionotify does not work with remote filesystems.

robertkwild · 04-27-2016, 04:50 PM

just thinking, would find command do this?

michaelk · 04-27-2016, 06:13 PM

Maybe the ls -lt command to capture the latest file. If the file name or size remains unchanged after a specified time then run your script.