fanotify_init(), fanotify_mark(), and notification groups

The fanotify_init(2) system call creates and initializes an fanotify notification group and returns a file descriptor referring to it.

An fanotify notification group is a kernel-internal object that holds a list of files, directories, and mount points for which events shall be created.

For each entry in an fanotify notification group, two bit masks exist: the mark mask and the ignore mask. The mark mask defines file activities for which an event shall be created. The ignore mask defines activities for which no event shall be generated. Having these two types of masks permits a mount point or directory to be marked for receiving events, while at the same time ignoring events for specific objects under that mount point or directory.

The fanotify_mark(2) system call adds a file, directory, or mount to a notification group and specifies which events shall be reported (or ignored), or removes or modifies such an entry.

A possible usage of the ignore mask is for a file cache. Events of interest for a file cache are modification of a file and closing of the same. Hence, the cached directory or mount point is to be marked to receive these events. After receiving the first event informing that a file has been modified, the corresponding cache entry will be invalidated. No further modification events for this file are of interest until the file is closed. Hence, the modify event can be added to the ignore mask. Upon receiving the close event, the modify event can be removed from the ignore mask and the file cache entry can be updated.

The entries in the fanotify notification groups refer to files and directories via their inode number and to mounts via their mount ID. If files or directories are renamed or moved within the same mount, the respective entries survive. If files or directories are deleted or moved to another mount or if mounts are unmounted, the corresponding entries are deleted.

The event queue

As events occur on the filesystem objects monitored by a notification group, the fanotify system generates events that are collected in a queue. These events can then be read (using read(2) or similar) from the fanotify file descriptor returned by fanotify_init(2).

Two types of events are generated: notification events and permission events. Notification events are merely informative and require no action to be taken by the receiving application except for closing the file descriptor passed in the event (see below). Permission events are requests to the receiving application to decide whether permission for a file access shall be granted. For these events, the recipient must write a response which decides whether access is granted or not.

An event is removed from the event queue of the fanotify group when it has been read. Permission events that have been read are kept in an internal list of the fanotify group until either a permission decision has been taken by writing to the fanotify file descriptor or the fanotify file descriptor is closed.

Reading fanotify events

Calling read(2) for the file descriptor returned by fanotify_init(2) blocks (if the flag FAN_NONBLOCK is not specified in the call to fanotify_init(2)) until either a file event occurs or the call is interrupted by a signal (see signal(7)).

After a successful read(2), the read buffer contains one or more of the following structures:

For performance reasons, it is recommended to use a large buffer size (for example, 4096 bytes), so that multiple events can be retrieved by a single read(2).

The return value of read(2) is the number of bytes placed in the buffer, or −1 in case of an error (but see BUGS).

The fields of the fanotify_event_metadata structure are as follows:

The bit mask in mask indicates which events have occurred for a single filesystem object. Multiple bits may be set in this mask, if more than one event occurred for the monitored filesystem object. In particular, consecutive events for the same filesystem object and originating from the same process may be merged into a single event, with the exception that two permission events are never merged into one queue entry.

The bits that may appear in mask are as follows:

To check for any close event, the following bit mask may be used:

The following macros are provided to iterate over a buffer containing fanotify event metadata returned by a read(2) from an fanotify file descriptor:

In addition, there is:

Monitoring an fanotify file descriptor for events

When an fanotify event occurs, the fanotify file descriptor indicates as readable when passed to epoll(7), poll(2), or select(2).

Dealing with permission events

For permission events, the application must write(2) a structure of the following form to the fanotify file descriptor:

The fields of this structure are as follows:

If access is denied, the requesting application call will receive an EPERM error.

Closing the fanotify file descriptor

When all file descriptors referring to the fanotify notification group are closed, the fanotify group is released and its resources are freed for reuse by the kernel. Upon close(2), outstanding permission events will be set to allowed.

/proc/[pid]/fdinfo

The file /proc/[pid]/fdinfo/[fd] contains information about fanotify marks for file descriptor fd of process pid. See proc(5) for details.

Limitations and caveats

Fanotify reports only events that a user-space program triggers through the filesystem API. As a result, it does not catch remote events that occur on network filesystems.

The fanotify API does not report file accesses and modifications that may occur because of mmap(2), msync(2), and munmap(2).

Events for directories are created only if the directory itself is opened, read, and closed. Adding, removing, or changing children of a marked directory does not create events for the monitored directory itself.

Fanotify monitoring of directories is not recursive: to monitor subdirectories under a directory, additional marks must be created. (But note that the fanotify API provides no way of detecting when a subdirectory has been created under a marked directory, which makes recursive monitoring difficult.) Monitoring mounts offers the capability to monitor a whole directory tree.

The event queue can overflow. In this case, events are lost.

Example output

Program source

#define _GNU_SOURCE     /* Needed to get O_LARGEFILE definition */
#include <errno.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <limits.h>
#include <poll.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/fanotify.h>
#include <unistd.h>

/* Read all available fanotify events from the file descriptor 'fd' */

static void
handle_events(int fd)
{
    const struct fanotify_event_metadata *metadata;
    struct fanotify_event_metadata buf[200];
    ssize_t len;
    char path[PATH_MAX];
    ssize_t path_len;
    char procfd_path[PATH_MAX];
    struct fanotify_response response;

    /* Loop while events can be read from fanotify file descriptor */

    for(;;) {

        /* Read some events */

        len = read(fd, (void *) &buf, sizeof(buf));
        if (len == −1 && errno != EAGAIN) {
            perror("read");
            exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
        }

        /* Check if end of available data reached */

        if (len <= 0)
            break;

        /* Point to the first event in the buffer */

        metadata = buf;

        /* Loop over all events in the buffer */

        while (FAN_EVENT_OK(metadata, len)) {

            /* Check that run−time and compile−time structures match */

            if (metadata−>vers != FANOTIFY_METADATA_VERSION) {
                fprintf(stderr,
                        "Mismatch of fanotify metadata version.\n");
                exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
            }

            /* metadata−>fd contains either FAN_NOFD, indicating a
               queue overflow, or a file descriptor (a nonnegative
               integer). Here, we simply ignore queue overflow. */

            if (metadata−>fd >= 0) {

                /* Handle open permission event */

                if (metadata−>mask & FAN_OPEN_PERM) {
                    printf("FAN_OPEN_PERM: ");

                    /* Allow file to be opened */

                    response.fd = metadata−>fd;
                    response.response = FAN_ALLOW;
                    write(fd, &response,
                          sizeof(struct fanotify_response));
                }

                /* Handle closing of writable file event */

                if (metadata−>mask & FAN_CLOSE_WRITE)
                    printf("FAN_CLOSE_WRITE: ");

                /* Retrieve and print pathname of the accessed file */

                snprintf(procfd_path, sizeof(procfd_path),
                         "/proc/self/fd/%d", metadata−>fd);
                path_len = readlink(procfd_path, path,
                                    sizeof(path) − 1);
                if (path_len == −1) {
                    perror("readlink");
                    exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
                }

                path[path_len] = '\0';
                printf("File %s\n", path);

                /* Close the file descriptor of the event */

                close(metadata−>fd);
            }

            /* Advance to next event */

            metadata = FAN_EVENT_NEXT(metadata, len);
        }
    }
}

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    char buf;
    int fd, poll_num;
    nfds_t nfds;
    struct pollfd fds[2];

    /* Check mount point is supplied */

    if (argc != 2) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s MOUNT\n", argv[0]);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    printf("Press enter key to terminate.\n");

    /* Create the file descriptor for accessing the fanotify API */

    fd = fanotify_init(FAN_CLOEXEC | FAN_CLASS_CONTENT | FAN_NONBLOCK,
                       O_RDONLY | O_LARGEFILE);
    if (fd == −1) {
        perror("fanotify_init");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    /* Mark the mount for:
       − permission events before opening files
       − notification events after closing a write−enabled
         file descriptor */

    if (fanotify_mark(fd, FAN_MARK_ADD | FAN_MARK_MOUNT,
                      FAN_OPEN_PERM | FAN_CLOSE_WRITE, AT_FDCWD,
                      argv[1]) == −1) {
        perror("fanotify_mark");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    /* Prepare for polling */

    nfds = 2;

    /* Console input */

    fds[0].fd = STDIN_FILENO;
    fds[0].events = POLLIN;

    /* Fanotify input */

    fds[1].fd = fd;
    fds[1].events = POLLIN;

    /* This is the loop to wait for incoming events */

    printf("Listening for events.\n");

    while (1) {
        poll_num = poll(fds, nfds, −1);
        if (poll_num == −1) {
            if (errno == EINTR)     /* Interrupted by a signal */
                continue;           /* Restart poll() */

            perror("poll");         /* Unexpected error */
            exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
        }

        if (poll_num > 0) {
            if (fds[0].revents & POLLIN) {

                /* Console input is available: empty stdin and quit */

                while (read(STDIN_FILENO, &buf, 1) > 0 && buf != '\n')
                    continue;
                break;
            }

            if (fds[1].revents & POLLIN) {

                /* Fanotify events are available */

                handle_events(fd);
            }
        }
    }

    printf("Listening for events stopped.\n");
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}