Hi Martin
Martin Rode wrote:
1) Is FAM capable of doing what I need to create a "hot folder" without
polling the directory every n seconds ?
Yes!
To elaborate on what others have already mentioned:
There are 2 parts to the FAM system:
- a user space part
- a kernel space part
FAM is the name of the user space part, and can be downloaded here:
<URL:ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/download/fam-latest.tar.gz>
You can also find FAM in many recent Linux distributions. If you can
find it on your distribution, you'll probably be able to ignore the IMon
v. DNotify information that follows, as things should work without any
modifications.
For the kernel space part, you can choose between IMon and DNotify.
IMon is the kernel space monitor written by SGI. It is designed to be
very efficient, and hooks in directly at the kernel level.
Unfortunately, it doesn't hook in in a clean manner, and it takes too
much time for me to make a new release of IMon every time there is a new
version of the Linux kernel, so I'm not actively maintaining IMon any
longer. The latest versions you can download have been contributed by
users. With this in mind, you can get the IMon patch here:
<URL:ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/download/imon/> (choose the version
most appropriate for the Linux kernel version you're running).
As you will read in the file you download, you get IMon working by
patching the Linux kernel sources with this patch using a command like
patch < imon-0.0.2-2.4.7.
DNotify is the kernel space monitor included as a standard part of the
Linux kernel since Linux 2.4.0. It does the job nicely, but the way it
works is probably not as efficient, and it actually opens the files
directly, so you might not think of this as an entirely kernel-based
utility. Because DNotify is already in the kernel, you will not need to
do any patching of the kernel if you're using a version >= 2.4.0. The
implication of this is it's probably easier to use IMon if you're using
a 2.2 or earlier kernel. The version of FAM that's available for
download does not support DNotify, but there's a well-tested patch to
add DNotify support available at:
<URL:ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/download/patches/dnotify.patch>.
If no kernel monitor is available, FAM will fall back to polling the
file system, so that developers can be sure that FAM will report changes
on files, regardless of whether the host FAM is running on has something
like IMon or DNotify.
I hope this answers any preliminary questions you might have. If you
would like to know anything further, please read the FAM FAQ at:
<URL:http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/faq.html>. I would also recommend
looking at our mailing list archives at:
<URL:http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/mail.html>, however things aren't
working properly there since early April when the server was relocated.
For help on the patches, see if there's a docmentation file such as
README or INSTALL in the sources.
If all that fails, please feel welcome to post your question here.
Regards
--
MICHAEL WARDLE | WORK +61-2-6024-2699
SGI Desktop & Admin Software | MOBILE +61-415-439-838
Adacel Technologies Limited | WEB www.softwarecoding.com
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