Watch Filesystem in Real Time on OS X and Ubuntu

Posted by Adrian Schneider on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Adrian Schneider
Published on 2012-06-01T21:58:39Z Indexed on 2012/06/01 22:43 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 264

Filed under:

linux

|

osx

|

sync

|

inotify

I'm looking for a CLI tool which will watch a directory and spit out the names of files that change in real time.

some_watch_command /path/to/some/folder | xargs some_callback

I'm aware of inotify (inotify-tools?) and it seems to be what I need, but I need something that is both Linux (in my case Ubuntu) and OSX compatible.

It doesn't need to be lightning fast, but it does need to trigger upon changes (within a second is reasonable). Also, I don't necessarily need the exact CLI program mentioned above. If some underlying tech exists and is easily scriptable on both platforms that would be great too.

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about linux

apt-get install and update fail

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I've got a problem with apt-get update and apt-get install ... commands . every time update or installing fails and errors are : Get:1 http://dl.google.com stable Release.gpg [198B] Ign http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable/main Translation-en_US Get:2 http://dl… >>> More
kernel module compiling error

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
sh@ubuntu:/home/ccpp/helloworld$ make gcc-4.6 -O2 -DMODULE -D_KERNEL_ -W -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -isystem /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/include -c -o hello-1.o hello-1.c hello-1.c:4:0: warning: "MODULE" redefined [enabled by default] <command-line>:0:0: note: this is… >>> More
Build-Essentials installation failing

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I am having trouble accessing the several critical header files that show to be a part of the build process. The "Ubuntu Software Center" shows "Build Essentials" as installed: Next I did the following two commands, which did not improve the problem: ~$ sudo apt-get install build-essential [sudo]… >>> More
Updating Debian kernel

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I'm trying to update my Debian machine to 2.6.32-46 (which is the new stable). However, after doing apt-get update my apt-cache search linux-image shows me: linux-headers-2.6.32-5-486 - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-486 linux-headers-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-686-bigmem linux-headers-2… >>> More
Serial connection over a single USB cable (Windows to linux, or linux to linux)

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm helping out with a project for an embedded device that only has USB and no serial. This device is running Linux. These days, when we need to connect to a serial port on a device we typically use a USB to serial adapter (on something like a phone system or a load balancing device, etc). I would… >>> More

Related posts about osx

OSX/Wine - Associating file extension (.php) with a Windows program on OSX

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Greetings, I am running PSPad (a Windows programming editor) on OSX/Snow Leopard using Wine 1.1.35 I want to associate various file extensions (.php, .js, .html) with PSPad.exe OSX Finder does not allow this association -- I can only associate file types with $.app items in Applications. How do… >>> More
osx web service spawns icon in taskbar - osx - while drawing image

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a web endpoint that displays an image of a string... When the following code is run (in tomcat) it spawns a java icon in the taskbar on OSX. Not sure if it is a problem, or whats going on. Looking for some sort of explination @RequestMapping("/text/{text}") public void textImage(HttpServletResponse… >>> More
Cannot disable spotlight indexing on volume

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have a FAT32 partition on my HDD. When using OSX, it is mounted to /Volumes/MEDIA. After a recent upgrade to Mavericks, spotlight is having trouble indexing it, eating up almost all of my system resources, and I cannot get the indexing to stop: [jay-mba-osx ~]% sudo mdutil -v -a -i off /: Indexing… >>> More
OSX - User home directories shared via NFS

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi, I've run into some problems with how I've got user home directories set up on our system here. Our server is an XServe, using Open Directory to manage the user accounts. The majority of our workstations are OSX, but there are a few running Linux (Centos 5.3), and, as time goes on, we expect… >>> More
Can't connect to local IP address on OSX

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to connect to a webserver that's running on my mac OSX 1.6. I'm able to connect to it locally using http://127.0.0.1:8888/myapp but when I attempt to connect to it using my machine's local IP address (http://192.168.1.15:8888/myapp IP shown below) from the same machine (or another on the… >>> More