[$] Filesystem notification, part 1: An overview of dnotify and inotify

Filesystem notification APIs provide a mechanism by which applications can be informed when events happen within a filesystem—for example, when a file is opened, modified, deleted, or renamed. Over time, Linux has acquired three different filesystem notification APIs, and it is instructive to look at them to understand what the differences between the APIs are. It's also worthwhile to consider what lessons have been learned during the design of the APIs—and what lessons remain to be learned.

The first part of guest author Michael Kerrisk's series on filesystem notification in Linux is now available for subscribers.