Inotify service

inotify_service can be used to build a Linux service similar to the outdated incron.

It's based on the (simple and efficient) python asyncinotify package.

We (Majerti) use it in production with a low load. We don't have any feedback on performance to provide.

Install

apt-get install python3-venv
python3 -m venv /usr/local/inotify_service_venv
source /usr/local/inotify_service_venv/bin/activate
pip install inotify_service

Setup

You can download a suitable log.conf sample file on the github page :

https://github.com/majerteam/inotify_service/

mkdir -p /etc/inotify_service/conf.d
cp log.conf /etc/inotify_service/

Add yaml configuration files for the directories you want to watch.

Each yaml file can contain one or more configurations placed into a yaml list

- script: "sleep 2 | echo {path} > /tmp/titi.log"
  directory: "/tmp"
  pattern: "[a-z0-9_]+\\.pdf$"
  events:
    - "CLOSE_WRITE"
    - "MOVED_TO"

- script: "echo {path}"
  directory: "/home/gas/tmp/"
  events:
    - "CLOSE_WRITE"

Mandatory parameters:

script : The command to launch, the following parameters are passed

• path : The absolute path on disk
• filename: The name of the file
• name : The event name (CLOSE_WRITE ...)

directory : The directory to watch

events : List of events that should fire the script

Optionnal parameters:

pattern : A regexp pattern used to match the file names that can be managed

Systemd Service Setup

If you used the same directories as here above you can just use the .service file that you can download in the github repository.

https://github.com/majerteam/inotify_service/

cp inotify_service.service /etc/systemd/system/
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable inotify_service.service
systemctl start inotify_service.service
systemctl status inotify_service.service  # Default configuration should print the directories that are watched