Text File Tracker & Logger for Linux

[shahyan]

We have a folder in which several dozen files get updated simultaneously. Our software is encountering issues detecting changes to this file, and our developers are stating that the changes don't get written to the file in a timely manner. The software that is writing the changes states that they are written in time. So i am looking for an independent Linux tracker utility which will monitor and log changes made to text files. It would be great if we could get both a log of the files changed and what changes were made.

Do you know of any such utilities that track changes to Linux files, what changes were made and at what time? The util would need to monitor the folder every 500 miliseconds.

PS: It isn't always the last line in the file that is edited. THe changes can be made anywhere in the TXT file.

[Irithori]

You are describing the purposes of a version control system.
Subversion comes to mind.

However, updates (commits) every 500ms might be a problem.

[Irithori]

Alternatively -if the file structure allows-, let the application write to a dedicated database.

[sgosnell]

As I understand it, with a journaling filesystem, changes aren't necessarily written immediately to disk. The software may commit the changes, and think it was written, but the filesystem writes to disk when it decides to. I don't quite understand why you need to check for changes every few milliseconds, but if you really require that, then you need a different filesystem, I think.