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On GNU/Linux the program uses inotify.
See monitoring file system events in inotify(7) man page.
The maximum number of watches a user process can have is controlled by
the ‘fs.inotify.max_user_watches’ system variable. Normally it
is set to 8192, which is quite enough for most purposes. However, if
you monitor a big number or directories and/or are using recursive
watchers, you may need to increase this number. In that case, use
sysctl (see configure kernel parameters at
runtime in sysctl(8) man page) to raise the limit, e.g.:
sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=16384
Most GNU/Linux distributions provide the file /etc/sysctl.conf which can be used to set this variable on startup.
The following system-dependent events are defined on systems that use
inotify:
A file was accessed.
A file’s metadata changed.
A writable file was closed.
An unwritable file closed.
A file was created.
A file was deleted.
A file was modified.
A file was moved into a monitored directory.
A file was moved out from a monitored directory.
A file was opened.