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inotify wikipedia jump to content main menu main menu move to sidebar hide navigation main page contents current events random article about wikipedia contact us contribute help learn to edit community portal recent changes upload file special pages search search appearance donate create account log in personal tools donate create account log in contents move to sidebar hide top 1 limitations 2 history 3 advantages over dnotify 4 see also 5 references 6 external links toggle the table of contents inotify 10 languages català čeština deutsch français 日本語 한국어 norsk bokmål polski русский 中文 edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia linux subsystem for filesystem monitoring inotify inode notify is a linux kernel subsystem created by john mccutchan which monitors changes to the filesystem and reports those changes to applications it can be used to automatically update directory views reload configuration files log changes backup synchronize and upload the inotifywait and inotifywatch commands maintained by eric curtin as part of the inotify tools project allow using the inotify subsystem from the command line 1 one major use is in desktop search utilities like beagle where its functionality permits reindexing of changed files without scanning the filesystem for changes every few minutes which would be very inefficient inotify replaced an earlier facility dnotify which had similar goals inotify was merged into the linux kernel mainline in kernel version 2 6 13 released on august 29 2005 2 later kernel versions included further improvements the required library interfaces were added into the gnu c library glibc in its version 2 4 released in march 2006 while the support for inotify was completed in glibc version 2 5 released in september 2006 3 limitations edit limitations imposed by inotify include the following inotify does not support recursively watching directories meaning that a separate inotify watch must be created for every subdirectory 4 in contrast the command inotifywait does provide recursive watching of directories 5 inotify does report some but not all events in sysfs and procfs notification via inotify requires the kernel to be aware of all relevant filesystem events which is not always possible for networked filesystems such as nfs where changes made by one client are not immediately broadcast to other clients rename events are not handled directly i e inotify issues two separate events that must be examined and matched in a context of potential race conditions history edit july 2004 the first release announcement 6 august 29 2005 linux kernel version 2 6 13 released containing merged inotify code 2 march 2006 gnu c library glibc version 2 4 released bringing initial inotify support 3 september 2006 glibc version 2 5 released bringing complete inotify support 3 advantages over dnotify edit there are a number of advantages when using inotify when compared to the older dnotify api that it replaced 7 8 9 with dnotify a program had to use one file descriptor for each directory that it was monitoring this can become a bottleneck since the limit of file descriptors per process could be reached later fanotify was created to overcome this issue the use of file descriptors along with dnotify also proved to be a problem when using removable media devices could not be unmounted since file descriptors kept the resource busy another drawback of dnotify is the level of granularity since programmers can only monitor changes at the directory level to access detailed information about the environmental changes that occur when a notification message is sent a stat structure must be used this is considered a necessary evil in that a cache of stat structures has to be maintained for every new stat structure generated a comparison is run against the cached one the inotify api uses fewer file descriptors allowing programmers to use the established select and poll interface rather than the signal notification system used by dnotify this also makes integration with existing select or poll based libraries like glib easier see also edit computer programming portal linux portal file alteration monitor sgi dmapi kqueue freebsd netbsd openbsd dragonfly bsd and macos fsevents macos references edit inotify tools wiki 1 2 linux 2 6 13 kernelnewbies org 1 2 3 inotify man page robert love linux system programming o reilly p 236 inotifywait 1 linux user manual user commands from manned org fa linux kernel post rfc patch inotify 0 8 2004 07 29 retrieved 2013 08 19 michael kerrisk 14 july 2014 filesystem notification part 2 a deeper investigation of inotify lwn net eli m dow 2005 05 31 monitor linux file system events with inotify why inotify archived from the original on 2010 01 16 inotify readme file external links edit kernel korner an introduction to inotify by robert love 2005 lwn article on inotify watching filesystem events with inotify partly out of date ibm article monitoring linux filesystem events with inotify 6 september 2008 filesystem notification part 1 an overview of dnotify and inotify an lwn net article by michael kerrisk 2014 v t e linux linux kernel history linus s law linux libre booting process kernel oops tux more controversies criticism of linux gnu linux naming controversy tanenbaum torvalds debate sco and linux distributions general comparison distributions list netbook specific comparison distributions that run from ram lightweight security focused operating system package manager package format list of software package managers organizations linuxchix linux counter linux documentation project linux foundation linux mark institute linux user group lug adoption adopters desktop embedded gaming mobile range of use state government sponsored linux malware media distrowatch free software magazine full circle linux com linux format linux gazette linux journal linux magazine linuxuser ubuntu user linux outlaws linux voice lugradio lwn net phoronix revolution os the code security certifications comptia linux linux foundation red hat linux portal free and open source software portal category v t e linux kernel organization kernel linux foundation linux mark institute linus s law tanenbaum torvalds debate tux sco disputes linaro gnu gpl v2 menuconfig supported computer architectures version history criticism support developers the linux programming interface kernel org lkml linux conferences users linux user group lug people werner almesberger h peter anvin jens axboe moshe bar suparna bhattacharya andries brouwer rémy card alan cox matthew garrett avi kivity con kolivas greg kroah hartman robert love david s miller ingo molnár andrew morton hans reiser rusty russell shuah khan linus torvalds theodore ts o stephen tweedie harald welte chris wright technical debugging criu ftrace kdump linux kernel oops systemtap bpf ebpf startup vmlinux system map dracut initrd initramfs abis linux standard base x32 abi apis kernel system call interface posix ioctl select open read close sync linux only futex epoll splice dnotify inotify readahead in kernel alsa crypto api io_uring drm kernfs memory barrier new api rcu video4linux iio userspace daemons file systems bpffs configfs devfs devpts debugfs fuse hugetlbfs pipefs procfs securityfs sockfs sysfs tmpfs systemd udev kmscon binfmt_misc wrapper libraries c standard library glibc uclibc bionic libhybris dietlibc eglibc klibc musl newlib libcgroup libdrm libalsa libevdev libusb liburing components kernel modules bluez cgroups console bcache device mapper dm cache dm crypt drm edac evdev kernel same page merging ksm lio framebuffer lvm kms driver netfilter netlink nftables network scheduler perf slub zram zswap process and i o schedulers brain fuck scheduler completely fair scheduler cfs earliest eligible virtual deadline first eevdf noop scheduler o n scheduler o 1 scheduler sched_deadline sched_fifo sched_rr security modules apparmor exec shield seccomp selinux smack tomoyo linux linux pam device drivers 802 11 graphics raw device initramfs kernelcare kexec kgraft kpatch ksplice variants mainline linux kernel linux libre high performance computing ink compute node linux slurm real time computing rtlinux rtai xenomai preempt_rt mmu less μclinux psxlinux virtualization hypervisor kvm xen os level virtualization linux vserver lguest lxc openvz other l4linux user mode linux mklinux colinux adoption range of use desktop embedded gaming thin client ltsp server lamp lyme lyce devices adopters list of linux adopters linux portal free and open source software portal category retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title inotify oldid 1362915615 category linux kernel features hidden categories articles with short description short description matches wikidata this page was last edited on 7 july 2026 at 00 04 utc page was rendered with parsoid text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike 4 0 license additional terms may apply by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc a non profit organization privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia legal safety contacts code of conduct developers statistics cookie statement mobile view search search toggle the table of contents inotify 10 languages add topic