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When I used INotify with /etc/mtab or /proc/mounts, it doesn't detect changes when things mount or unmount, even though /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts both have changed when I check manually. Why is this, and how can I track mounting and unmounting things?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Christopher King
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  • The duplicate is alsa-themed so not an exact match, but it does answer the question of why inotify doesn't work under /proc. As supplementary information, there is no alternate interface that I know of that will fire events that you can subscribe to when filesystems are mounted and unmounted. I've searched for it before. – Celada Mar 05 '16 at 21:45
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    stat /etc/mtab will tell you why the other answer is completely relevant – Shawn J. Goff Mar 06 '16 at 00:14

1 Answers1

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From the inotify man page:

various pseudo-filesystems such as /proc, /sys, and /dev/pts are not monitorable with inotify.

and /etc/mtab is often just a link to /proc/mounts these days. You can use udisksctl monitor to see mounts happen, or set your own /etc/udev/rules.d/ rule file to run a program when a new device is added (before any mount), or run dbus-monitor to see mount events pass on that bus. All a bit complicated.

meuh
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