Monitor a Directory for File Changes with inotifywait

Sometimes there may be a need to monitor and be alerted when any new files have been added in a particular directory.

One of the quickest way to do that is to use inotifywait. You can find it in the inotify-tools package.

If you don’t have it yet, you can install it with apt-get install inotify-tools if you’re on Debian/Ubuntu.

Create a nice looking bash script. Maybe something called watcher.sh, copy the following script and fire away!

#!/bin/bash
inotifywait -m /path/to/directory/to/observe  -e create -e moved_to |
    while read path action file; do
        curl -X POST --data-urlencode 'payload={"text": "'"$file"' is uploaded to '"$path"' on '"$HOSTNAME"'."}' https://hooks.slack.com/services/secret
        echo "The file '$file' appeared in directory '$path' via '$action'"
    done

This particular snippet will send out a Slack alert whenever a directory has new files added.