Linux command to montior a folder

saravanan1979 · 06-15-2002, 01:27 AM

Hello
Is there any Linux command to monitor a folder,and identify when a new folder is added to the folder or when a file is deleted from the folder.

Regards
Saravanan

trickykid · 06-15-2002, 01:42 AM

No command that I know of would do that... I think most likely you would have to make a script and then setup a cron job to run however often you want (every hour, day... etc) for it to check the folder for changes.... etc.

saravanan1979 · 06-15-2002, 02:24 AM

okay then can u tell me the linux cmd to find the total space in a folder, and total number of files in it.

Regards
Saravanan

sakeeb · 06-15-2002, 02:55 AM

df will tell you the diskfree status. du can be used to get the disk space usage of a file or directory.

geoffm33 · 06-15-2002, 07:08 AM

du is right.

use it like this for a long list of files with their respective sizes in human readable form of the current working directory:

$bash> du -h .

use it like this for a summary mode output of the size of all the files in human readable form of the current working directory:

$bash> du -sh .

(Substitute the dir you want to analyze where the dot is above)

saravanan1979 · 06-15-2002, 07:26 AM

Dear Geofmm and sakeeb
Thanks a lot for ur reply.But dont we have any cmd in Linux similar to the Windows NT API functions which identifies when a file in a directory is added ,Edited or deleted.

geoffm33 · 06-15-2002, 08:43 AM

Have a look at tripwire though. When configured properly, it will tell you when a file has been added or deleted.

This shell script will summarize the action of a directory that is passed via the command line:

Quote:

#!/bin/bash

FILES=`find $1 -type f 2>/dev/null | wc -l`
DIRS=`find $1 -type d 2>/dev/null | wc -l`
SIZE=`du -sh $1 2>/dev/null`

echo "The total number of files in $1: $FILES"
echo "The total number of directories under $1: $DIRS"

echo "The total size of all files in $1: $SIZE"

run like this:

$bash> ./summary.sc /home/user1

Run intermittenly, you can see part of what you are after.

It is far from acurate if not run as superuser because it only reports on dirs you have permissions to. All errors are output to /dev/null.

IHTH

saravanan1979 · 06-17-2002, 10:34 AM

Dear Geofmm i am running Red Hat Linux 6.2,trip wire offers a speparate set of linux,anyway thanks a lot for ur shell script it does give me the total number of files and folders,for a given directory,but how do i retreive a new file that has been added to a directory.Of course i am going to run ur shell in a cron job,find out the previous file count ,current file count and by the difference and come to no that a new file has been added but how do i check for the created time.As far as i have checked i can find only Modified time,Last changed time and access time but there is no created time.Please let me know these details