David A. Lee ha scritto:
I've just now been reading about dnotify and inotify, and while if they existed on my system could work for this, I still think direct support would be cleaner and more efficient. D/I notify both require kernel patches not available on all Linux systems (and not at all on non-Linux systems).
Inotify is avalaible as a patch for 2.6. dnotify is included in the kernel, since 2.4.something and does not requires patches. You only need userspace tools (only 1 file).
They require an additional program to be running at all times monitoring the directory (probably one or more per user), and in one case it doesn't even say which file changed so the overhead of scanning the files in the directory is added on ...
It says which file/directory has changed. Try it. It does run all the time but it is triggered by a kernel event. It does not scans files/dirs all the time.
plus if you have multiple directories you'd have to write a special variant that kept a bunch of directory handles open. Very cumbersome.
Not at all. Try it.
While having a hook into dovecot to invoke a process when a particular folder was touched would be very clean. Maybe the "plugin" mechanism could be used to write such a thingy.
I agree that it would be a better solution. I don't agree when you say that dnotify is not a good solution, particulary when you have not tried it!
If timo will not write a plugin or you won't write it, I think dnotify/inotify is a good alternative.
Max