linux-kernel - Re: Maximum number of inotify watches

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Date:	Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:28:35 +0100
From:	Tvrtko Ursulin <tvrtko.ursulin@...lan.co.uk>
To:	"Tiberiu C. Turbureanu" <tct@...ta.org>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Maximum number of inotify watches

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
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