monitoring file and directory access on linux [closed]

Question

Do you know of any linux program, that would monitor accesses to directories and files in the filesystem? I would like to able to produce some report of how many times certain files were accessed in some period?

Pantomime

Answer 1

You probably want inotify-tools. Inotify is part of the linux kernal that triggers events on watched files, directories, or even the contents of entire directories. These tools are command line utilities that tap into the capabilities of inotify and allow you to use them, for example, in your shell scripts.

Specifically, you will probably want to look at inotifywatch

Cochleate

Mind that inotifywatch -r /tmp will simply count events happening in directory and output stats after program terminates. And inotifywait -mr /tmp will actually listen to all events and output them to console as they happen. (The -r flag is for recursive directory listening) – Crifasi