Watcherd Shell Listener for Directory Changes in Linux

Last Updated : 29 Jan, 2021

Watcherd is a tool for Linux that helps to monitor directory changes and print whatever changes are done like adding and deleting for a particular directory and execute commands and shell scripts according to a particular event.

Installing Watcherd on Linux

Step 1: Downloading watcherd.

Since watcherd is a Github repository you can use wget command to download its zip and extract it. To do so execute the command:

wget https://github.com/devilbox/watcherd/archive/master.zip

Step 2: Unzipping and extracting.

After downloading unzip the file using the command:

unzip master.zip

In case you do not have to unzip installed then you can install it by using:

sudo apt-get install unzip

Step 3: Copy to the bin location.

Once unzipping is finished now you need to copy the files to the bin directory, to do so use the command:

sudo cp watcherd-master/watcherd /usr/bin/

Step 4: Check the tool is installed properly or not.

You can check the user manual by using the help command:

watcherd --help

Output:

Or you can check with –version

watcherd --version

Output:

Watcherd Working:

Step 1: Create a directory.

Make a directory named test in your current working directory

mkdir sample

Step 2: Now start watcherd.

Now deploy watcherd using the following parameters:

watcherd -v -p ~/sample -a "echo added %n" -d "echo deleted %n" -t "ls -l ~/sample" &

Output:

where
-v stands for verbose which will verbosify the output of the command
-p stands for the path to directory, and we have used test for the subject
-a stands for executing the command if any directory path is created , we have used echo for printing but you can also add any other way of scripting and make the best use out of it.
-d stands for executing the command if any directory path is deleted and vice versa.
%n will be substituted with directory name or you can use %p to get a full path to the created or deleted directory
-t “ls -l ~/test” execute command after triggering
& run in background

Step 3: After executing the command check if it’s running by using the command:

ps ax | grep watcherd

Output:

Now let’s do some adding and deleting directory in our test folder and see what happens, directory can be named anything, for instance we are using anon.