file monitoring

[cuek]

I want to set up a log with who/when info for viewing/changing certain files on my system.

Any URL/book ideas on what I need to learn to be able to script something up to do this (preferably in BASH or PERL), I would appreciate it.

 

[MikeLacey]

cuek,

The only way I know to do this would be to take a copy of these files and tuck them away somewhere using tar maybe. Once a day the current scripts could be compared with the archived copies and changes notified.

Is this what you had in mind?
Mike
"Experience is the comb that Nature gives us after we are bald."

Is that a haiku?
I never could get the hang
of writing those things.

 

[Guest_imported]

That's not what i had in mind, because that won't tell me Who changed it or when.

I can always run tripwire to see if it changed, or just run an ls -alt to see when it was written to. (or ls -alu to see when accessed). I want to know WHO accessed it. (or at least who changed it).

And i don't want the users to have to do anything (like use version control or what not).

I'm sure it is possible. It may be as easy as properly configuring process accounting or as difficult as scripting up a daemon which checks every second who is writing to disk, where, and correlating tty's. (Certainly i could rig up something with lsof, for example, but lsof does a LOT and for a lot of stuff, i obviously need something that isn't going to take up all of the resources on my box just to watch a couple files). Maybe I should look at the lsof source, but man, i'm not eager to do that!

 

[RobJordan]

What about scanning the history files for users?

Robert Robert G. Jordan

Robert@JORDAN2000.com

http://www.JORDAN2000.com/scripts

Unix Sys Admin
Chicago, Illinois U.S.A.

 

[MikeLacey]

Are you sure that this isn't a management rather than a technical problem? Have you thought about restricting access to the files with standard UNIX permissions or Access Control Lists? Mike
"Experience is the comb that Nature gives us after we are bald."

Is that a haiku?
I never could get the hang
of writing those things.

 

[mrn]

Why not impletment CVS then all your scripts/files are in one place, and people checkout/checkin scripts/files as they need them. Also doing this means two or more people can work on the same file at the same time and then they can be merged back into the final file. You will also be able to see who has changed what and when.

see

http://www.cvshome.org

for more info & downloads

Mike --
| Mike Nixon
| Unix Admin
|

http://www.instantflashshop.com

----------------------------

 

[unix42]

There is a package called fam
File Alteration Monitor

http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam

I've never used it but it sounds like what you are looking for.

hth
unix42