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What is inotify:

inotify is a Linux kernel subsystem that acts to extend filesystems to notice changes to the filesystem, and report those changes to applications.

for OpenVMS?

CW Holeman II
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3 Answers3

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The only thing I know of in OpenVMS that looks similar to what inotify does is the SET WATCH command.

See http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/217 or http://www.openvms.compaq.com/wizard/wiz_1843.html for some basic info.

Hellion
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Another way would be to add an ACL to the file that generates a security audit event

An ACL is an access control list, it consists of ACE's (access control entries)

This would need to be done at different places. 1 is on the object you want to audit and then other is to enable the audit to be captured and reported

However, this auditing will catch the event but will not relay it to another application. The application that is interested in the event would need to access the audit logging facility to extract the event

  1. On the file add an alarming ACE You would add an ACE to the file and specify what conditions would trigger the security alarm to fire

For example, to add an alarm ACE to a file called SECUREFILE.DAT

$ SET SECURITY/ACL=(ALARM=SECURITY,ACCESS=READ+WRITE- _$ +DELETE+CONTROL+FAILURE+SUCCESS) SECUREFILE.DAT

This will cause the file system to trigger an alarm every time the SECUREFILE.DAT file is accessed for READ or WRITE or DELETE and whether or not the file header is changed and whether or not an attempt for the above events were successful or not

  1. Then you have to enable auditing to catch those security events that were fired

You do this through the set audit command. The documentation is extensive on this command as OpenVMS can audit a large number of events, from files, to queues to logical name tables etc

Here is a snippet from the VMS help

SET

AUDIT

   Provides the management interface to the security auditing
   system.

   Requires the SECURITY privilege.

   Format

     SET AUDIT/qualifier


   There are five categories of qualifiers, grouped by task, for the
   SET AUDIT command:

   Task           Qualifiers     Requirements

   Define         /AUDIT,        Specify whether you are defining
   auditing       /ALARM,        alarms (/ALARM), audits (/AUDIT),
   events         /CLASS,        or both. Also specify whether you
                  /ENABLE,       are enabling (/ENABLE) or disabling
                  /DISABLE       (/DISABLE) the reporting of the
                                 event.

   Define         /DESTINATION,  Requires both the /DESTINATION and
   auditing       /JOURNAL,      /JOURNAL qualifiers.
   log file       /VERIFY

   Define         /INTERVAL,     None.
   operational    /LISTENER,
   character-     /SERVER,
   istics of      /VERIFY
   the audit
   server and
   a listener
   mailbox (if
   any)

   Define         /ARCHIVE,      None.
   secondary      /DESTINATION,
   log file       /VERIFY

   Define         /BACKLOG,      With the /RESOURCE or /THRESHOLD
   resource       /EXCLUDE,      qualifier, include the /JOURNAL
   monitoring     /JOURNAL,      qualifier.
   defaults       /RESOURCE,
                  /THRESHOLD,
                  /VERIFY


Additional information available:

Qualifiers
/ALARM     /ARCHIVE   /AUDIT     /BACKLOG   /CLASS     /DESTINATION          /DISABLE   /ENABLE    /EXCLUDE   /FAILURE_MODE
/INTERVAL  /JOURNAL   /LISTENER  /RESOURCE  /SERVER    /THRESHOLD /VERIFY
Examples

Best to read up on the documentation

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/83final/9996/9996pro_172.html

Ian D
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During the recent Technical Update Days in October 2011, I asked OpenVMS Engineering to port inotify to OpenVMS.

Here is the answer I got from Mandar, head of OpenVMS Engineering

We are currently analyzing this and would take further action based on initial study. Currently we are putting this in the wishlist for next release of OpenVMS.

Regards Mandar

If you install Python on OpenVMS with the LD Images from http://www.vmspython.org/DownloadAndInstallationPython then you can use the ptd routines http://www.vmspython.org/VMSPTDExample

Community
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k3c
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