IDEA: inotify - extend to be able to report changes in the past
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From: Bonne Eggleston on 7 Jul 2010 21:40 Hi, I have an idea for an improvement to inotify, which may interest a keen kernel developer. The problem: The inotify feature of the linux kernel is a great way for programs which need to know about file changes to track them without having to scan the drive. Unfortunately if a system is rebooted often (like desktop and laptop machines) then the program must run a scan at startup to check for changes since the last time it was running. This can use a considerable amount of resources and be a deterrent from the use of otherwise very useful programs (such as desktop search or online backup etc.) Potential solution: Some modern filesystems should be able to quickly retrieve a list of files which have changed since a certain time using the journal or equivalent. If this was implemented within the inotify framework then programs which use inotify could specify the timestamp when they last ran and retrieve all the changes since that date. Inotify could then return those change events in the usual way and possibly also a timestamp to confirm the oldest time it was able to check back to. This would remove the need for a scan at startup. At this stage this is nothing more than an idea, and may well be impossible or already implemented or already under development. In any case I thought it worthwhile to share. Please cc me in any responses. Regards, Bonne Eggleston -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ |