Maximum number of inotify watches

Maximum number of inotify watches

[Tiberiu C. Turbureanu]

 Hello,

 I want to monitor all the files on a server using one instance of 
 inotify and about 20M watches recursively set on directories in '/' tree 
 substructure. I'd want to be notified about all type of events defined 
 by inotify (create, delete, access, modify etc.)

 Assuming this monitor daemon running in user-space keeps up with the 
 frequency of new events in the kernel queue (it reads them), is it 
 possible to exceed the kernel memory limit because there are too many 
 watches and events?

 TIA,
 Tibi

Re: Maximum number of inotify watches

[Tvrtko Ursulin]

On Wednesday 22 Jun 2011 13:59:20 Tiberiu C. Turbureanu wrote:
>  Hello,
> 
>  I want to monitor all the files on a server using one instance of
>  inotify and about 20M watches recursively set on directories in '/' tree
>  substructure. I'd want to be notified about all type of events defined
>  by inotify (create, delete, access, modify etc.)
> 
>  Assuming this monitor daemon running in user-space keeps up with the
>  frequency of new events in the kernel queue (it reads them), is it
>  possible to exceed the kernel memory limit because there are too many
>  watches and events?

It does sounds unrealistic with your number of watches. 

Have a look at fanotify which will give you a subset of inotify events for 
just one watch per mount point. If you really need events which are not 
available maybe they can be added.

Tvrtko