pyinotify: monitor filesystem events with Python under Linux Source

May 3, 2007 Markdown source

1---
2title: 'pyinotify: monitor filesystem events with Python under Linux'
3date: '2007-05-03'
4published_at: '2007-05-03T16:18:00.001+10:00'
5tags: ['code', 'linux', 'python']
6author: 'Gavin Jackson'
7excerpt: 'Dan at work put me on to some new Linux Kernel functionality in the form of inotify - the userland tools and libraries allow you to hook into this pretty handy capability. It essentially allows you to...'
8updated_at: '2007-05-03T19:00:24.976+10:00'
9legacy_url: 'http://www.gavinj.net/2007/05/pyinotify.html'
10---
11
12Dan at work put me on to some new Linux Kernel functionality in the form of inotify - the userland tools and libraries allow you to hook into this pretty handy capability.
13
14It essentially allows you to watch for events on the filesystem - including creation, modification and deletion of files (this is a replacement and enhancement of the older dnotify system).
15
16The python library can be found at [http://pyinotify.sourceforge.net/ ](http://pyinotify.sourceforge.net/)(just ensure you have build-essential and python2.4-dev installed).
17
18I'm going to use this system to automatically perform postprocessing on uploaded files as soon as they arrive (including virus scanning, keyword indexing and possibly encryption/other sanitisation).
19
20
21

---
title: 'pyinotify: monitor filesystem events with Python under Linux'
date: '2007-05-03'
published_at: '2007-05-03T16:18:00.001+10:00'
tags: ['code', 'linux', 'python']
author: 'Gavin Jackson'
excerpt: 'Dan at work put me on to some new Linux Kernel functionality in the form of inotify - the userland tools and libraries allow you to hook into this pretty handy capability. It essentially allows you to...'
updated_at: '2007-05-03T19:00:24.976+10:00'
legacy_url: 'http://www.gavinj.net/2007/05/pyinotify.html'
---

Dan at work put me on to some new Linux Kernel functionality in the form of inotify - the userland tools and libraries allow you to hook into this pretty handy capability.

It essentially allows you to watch for events on the filesystem - including creation, modification and deletion of files (this is a replacement and enhancement of the older dnotify system).

The python library can be found at [http://pyinotify.sourceforge.net/ ](http://pyinotify.sourceforge.net/)(just ensure you have build-essential and python2.4-dev installed).

I'm going to use this system to automatically perform postprocessing on uploaded files as soon as they arrive (including virus scanning, keyword indexing and possibly encryption/other sanitisation).