I'm trying to write a backup utility that is supposed to handle a rough 2 terabytes of data in a lot of folders.
I want it to perform actions on files when they get created/edited/deleted preferably also file moves or renames.
I've messed around with fanotify, only to realize it only works with file edits. And I'm against using inotify if I can since I would have to edit the maximum file watches, which I don't want to do. It would have a big performance impact I presume.
I'd preferably just set a single filewatch that works recursively to all files underneath it. Is there anyone who has experience with this who knows what a good method is? Should I go for inotify and just take the performance hit? Or is there a different approach I can take?
I don't think there is a way to recursively watch for changes in a directory tree. On the other hand, with inotify, you don't need to create one file descriptor per directory you watch. You create a single inotify object and then add many directories to it with inotify_add_watch
int inotify_add_watch(int fd, const char *pathname, uint32_t mask);