How to check if file size is not incrementing ,if not then kill the $$ of script - linux

Question

I am trying to figure out a way to monitor the files I am dumping from my script. If there is no increment seen in child files then kill my script.
I am doing this to free up the resources when not needed. Here is what I think of , but I think my apporch is going to add burden to CPU. Can anyone please suggest more efficent way of doing this?
Below script is suppose to poll in every 15 sec and collect two file size of same file, if the size of the two samples are same then exit.
checkUsage() {
while true; do
sleep 15
fileSize=$(stat -c%s $1)
sleep 10;
fileSizeNew=$(stat -c%s $1)
if [ "$fileSize" == "$fileSizeNew" ]; then
echo -e "[Error]: No activity noted on this window from 5 sec. Exiting..."
kill -9 $$
fi
done
}
And I am planning to call it as follow (in background):
checkUsage /var/log/messages &
I can also get solution if, someone suggest how to monitor tail command and if nothing printing on tail then exit. NOT SURE WHY PEOPLE ARE CONFUSED. End goal of this question is to ,check if the some file is edited in last 15 seconds. If not exit or throw some error.
I have achived this by above script,but I don't know if this is the smartest way of achiveing this. I have asked this question to know views from other if there is any alternative way or better way of doing it.

Answer 1

I would based the check on file modification time instead of size, so something like this (untested code):
checkUsage() {
while true; do
# Test if file mtime is 'second arg' seconds older than date, default to 10 seconds
if [ $(( $(date +"%s") - $(stat -c%Y /var/log/message) )) -gt ${2-10} ]; then
echo -e "[Error]: No activity noted on this window from ${2-10} sec. Exiting..."
return 1
fi
#Sleep 'first arg' second, 15 seconds by default
sleep ${1-15}
done
}
The idea is to compare the file mtime with current time, if it's greater than second argument seconds, print the message and return.
And then I would call it like this later (or with no args to use defaults):
[ checkusage 20 10 ] || exit 1
Which would exit the script with code 1 as when the function return from it's infinite loop (as long as the file is modified)
Edit: reading me again, the target file could be a parameter too, to allow a better reuse of the function, left as an exercise to the reader.

Answer 2

If on Linux, in a local file system (Ext4, BTRFS, ...) -not a network file system- then you could consider inotify(7) facilities: something could be triggered when some file or directory changes or is accessed.
In particular, you might have some incron job thru incrontab(5) file; maybe it could communicate with some other job ...
PS. I am not sure to understand what you really want to do...

Answer 3

I suppose an external programme is modifying /var/log/messages.
If this is the case, below is my script (with minor changes to yours)
#Bash script to monitor changes to file
#!/bin/bash
checkUsage() # Note that U is in caps
{
while true
do
sleep 15
fileSize=$(stat -c%s $1)
sleep 10;
fileSizeNew=$(stat -c%s $1)
if [ "$fileSize" == "$fileSizeNew" ]
then
echo -e "[Notice : ] no changes noted in $1 : gracefully exiting"
exit # previously this was kill -9 $$
# changing this to exit would end the program gracefully.
# use kill -9 to kill a process which is not under your control.
# kill -9 sends the SIGKILL signal.
fi
done
}
checkUsage $1 # I have added this to your script
#End of the script
Save the script as checkusage and run it like :
./checkusage /var/log/messages &
Edit :
Since you're looking for better solutions I would suggest inotifywait, thanks for the suggestion from the other answerer.
Below would be my code :
while inotifywait -t 10 -q -e modify $1 >/dev/null
do
sleep 15 # as you said the polling would happen in 15 seconds.
done
echo "Script exited gracefully : $1 has not been changed"
Below are the details from the inotifywait manpage
-t <seconds>, --timeout <seconds> Exit if an appropriate event has not occurred within <seconds> seconds. If <seconds> is zero (the default),
wait indefinitely for an event.
-e <event>, --event <event> Listen for specific event(s) only. The events which can be listened for are listed in the EVENTS section.
This option can be specified more than once. If omitted, all events
are listened for.
-q, --quiet If specified once, the program will be less verbose. Specifically, it will not state when it has completed establishing all
inotify watches.
modify(Event) A watched file or a file within a watched directory was
written to.
Notes
You might have to install the inotify-tools first to make use of the inotifywait command. Check the inotify-tools page at Github.