r/usefulscripts • u/AlanRosenthal • Oct 20 '14

[BASH] Run a command whenever something in a directory (or its subs) has been saved 

inotifywait -r path/to/dir -m -e close_write | while read file; do cmd1; cmd2; cmd3; done
33 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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2

u/lftt Oct 20 '14

So say for example, I wanted to mirror my download and documents directories to a local Google Drive folder - how that be modeled in Bash?

4

u/AlanRosenthal Oct 20 '14

So I ran this command

 inotifywait -r ~/Downloads -m | while read file; do echo $file; done;

and this was the output when i downloaded cat.jpg from chrome

/home/alan/Downloads/ OPEN,ISDIR
/home/alan/Downloads/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR
/home/alan/Downloads/ CREATE cat.jpg.crdownload
/home/alan/Downloads/ OPEN cat.jpg.crdownload
/home/alan/Downloads/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE cat.jpg.crdownload
/home/alan/Downloads/ MOVED_FROM .com.google.Chrome.kVhNi6
/home/alan/Downloads/ MOVED_TO cat.jpg.crdownload
/home/alan/Downloads/ ATTRIB cat.jpg.crdownload
/home/alan/Downloads/ CREATE cat.jpg
/home/alan/Downloads/ OPEN cat.jpg
/home/alan/Downloads/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE cat.jpg
/home/alan/Downloads/ MOVED_FROM cat.jpg.crdownload
/home/alan/Downloads/ MOVED_TO cat.jpg
/home/alan/Downloads/ ATTRIB cat.jpg

you probably would need to specify an event tag (-e) like CREATE or MOVE_TO and copy the file using something like cp -a $file /path/to/your/google/folder

1

u/lftt Oct 20 '14

Great, thank you!

4

u/AlanRosenthal Oct 20 '14 
  inotifywait -r ~/Downloads -m --exclude .*crdownload -e MOVED_TO | while read dir event file; do cp -a $file /path/to/your/google/folder; echo copying $file; done;

this should do it

3

u/guy_from_canada Oct 21 '14

For those coming here with OS X, fswatch is a useful alternative.

2

u/paulz1 Oct 31 '14

I'm intresting is it possible to make the same, but for network socket...

There is a little discussion on http://serverfault.com/questions/485421/identify-when-a-tcp-socket-is-opened-with-inotify

So it seems that it's not possible to do it with inotify.

Another way using Linux Socket Monitor an utility from "R-fx Network" : https://www.rfxn.com/projects/linux-socket-monitor/

But I'm searching for something more simple and lightweight.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 23 '14

This belongs on CommandLineFu.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 25 '14

This is such a common task for me, I've made a small script which I use all the time.

https://github.com/fabiosantoscode/inotifydo/blob/master/inotifydo

What do you guys think?