inotify not reliable

The 'pup_event_frontend_d' script in Puppy has this:

inotifywait -m -e modify --format %w /tmp/pup_event_backend_s |
while read ONEEVENT
do
...
done

What this does is 'inotifywait' runs in daemon mode and outputs to stdout whenever the watched file is modified. This is how I am sending messages from the 'pup_event_backend_d' background daemon. The backend runs from startup of Puppy, the frontend only runs when X is running.

The problem is, I found that sometimes if I quit X then restart X, inotifywait fails to restart, with a message "Couldn't initialize inotify" on stderr.

The virtues of the inotify mechanism are extolled extensively all over the Internet, but this problem is a show-stopper for me. A quick google got few hits. I have posted a query to the inotify-tools mail-list, asking how can I stop then restart inotifywait reliably.

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Comments

A Solution
Username: Dougal
There's something that can be done to solve that, albeit a little awkwardly: Say you use a fifo, /tmp/tmpfifo, to transfer the data between the backend and frontend. In the backend script, just before you echo your info into the fifo, put: until pidof X >/dev/null ; do sleep 1 ; done This way it will wait for X (and hopefully, the frontend) before using the pipe... The only problem here is that if you're not using X, it will delay all event handling by the backend, since it will just keep waiting on that first iteration... This can be solved in an even more awkward way: using an intermediate script: ------------------------- #!/bin/sh INPIPE=/tmp/tmpfifo1 OUTPIPE=/tmp/tmpfifo2 [ -p $INPIPE ] || mkfifo $INPIPE [ -p $OUTPIPE ] || mkfifo $OUTPIPE while read ALINE ; do until pidof X >/dev/null ; do sleep 1 ; done echo "$ALINE" done<$INPIPE >$OUTPIPE ------------------------- (Where /tmp/tmpfifo1 is the one the backend feeds, while /tmp/tmpfifo2 is the one the frontend reads from.) This way the shell running the intermediate script will buffer everything and you won't get any broken pipes... (the only problem is if you never run X, this might take up memory... you could add a timeout for it -- then just make sure the intermediate is running if X is ever started) Note that the loop from the intermediate script can actually be inserted into the backend (being fed by the "done" of your big loop), thus saving the need for two fifos, but that would make it harder for you to add debug messages etc...

Tags: puppy