# fsnotify, dnotify, inotify & user-space part [solved]

## dermund

Hi all,

I am just curious.

Can somebody explain (or point to some nice manual) how fsnotify, dnotify and inotify fit together. Is fsnotify a replacement for the latter or does these  all work on different layers?

What is the dedicated user-space tool to find out what process is writing to my hard-disk continueosly?

Can I go with inotify-tools or is it deprecated?

Have a nice day,

dermundLast edited by dermund on Mon Nov 29, 2010 1:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## brantgurga

dnotify is the deprecated kernel component. inotify is the current component. According to http://lwn.net/Articles/311350/ fsnotify is a step towards making the notify interfaces a bit more abstract to do file access notification and not just file change notification.

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## dermund

Ah interesting. I thought inotify already can recognize file "access".

Are there userspace utilities yet, that make use of the fsnotify functionality you mentioned?

EDIT:  I just checked out inotify-tools, and they can know "access" functionality. I am happy with that.

Thanks, for explaining me.

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