Re: nother bash question

[Jörg-Volker Peetz <jvpeetz@web.de>]

Gene Heskett wrote on 06/13/16 12:34:
<snip>
> In any event a pair of "" around the left argument silenced the warning, 
> and it still works. However it may be that inotifywait is premature, as 
> I see that InMail occasionall contains a hash name of the order of:
> + test _KQG,TdoXXB.coyote = gene
> + test _KQG,TdoXXB.coyote = gene-from_linda
> + test _KQG,TdoXXB.coyote = amanda
> 
> which of course fails all 3 tests, and if I look a couple seconds later, 
> there is no such file in that directory.  So I'm assuming the mailfile 
> is being appended under a hashed up name & the real named file is nuked, 
> and the merged result is then renamed to its correct name.  But thats 
> just a swag, and we all know what a swag is. ;-)
> 
> In any event, an incoming may be undetected until the magic of time 
> actually returns the correct name, perhaps on the next message.  It 
> seems to be, as I observe it, a pattern of every 3rd access to that 
> directory.  There is of course no such pattern in the incoming mail.
> 
> Perhaps this needs a more exacting look. But with what tool?
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett

To do it at least interactively, there is the nice tool "watch" from the package
"procps":
To see what's going on in directory /path/to/xxx, command something like

  watch -d -n 1.5  ls -la /path/to/xxx

from a terminal big enough to show all files without scrolling.
The switch "-n 1.5" specifies the update interval in seconds.
If you only want to watch the 20 newest files, command

  watch -d -n 1.5  'ls -latr /path/to/xxx | tail -20'

To stop watching, press Ctrl-C.

Regards,
jvp.