Monitor remote shared-Folder (Windows/SMB) using WatchService

Question

I am trying to monitor a remote folder using WatchService (java.nio.file.*). Everything works fine for local folders. However I was unable to figure out how to monitor a remote share. Can I pass credentials along?

(If the user executing the code has the rights to mount the share it works as well.)

Here are parts of my code:

  public void lunch() throws IOException {
        boolean recursive = true;
        Path dir = Paths.get("C:\\test");
        new Watch(dir, recursive).processEvents();
    }

    public Watch(Path dir, boolean recursive) throws IOException {
        this.watcher = FileSystems.getDefault().newWatchService();
        this.keys = new HashMap<WatchKey,Path>();
        this.recursive = recursive;

        if (recursive) {
            System.out.format("Scanning %s ...\n", dir);
            registerAll(dir);
            System.out.println("Done.");
        } else {
            register(dir);
        }
}

Cheers, Stephanie

Answer 1

From WatchService javadoc

If a watched file is not located on a local storage device then it is implementation specific if changes to the file can be detected. In particular, it is not required that changes to files carried out on remote systems be detected.