Hi all,

I have a query and need advise. is it possible to have a script which will monitor file/s on network shared drive (windows machine)? Is there a way i can monitor a file is available on shared drive and move it over to unix machine for further processing? Any guidance or advice much appreciated.

Thank you.

Sure, there's a bunch of ways you can do this:

• Run periodic ftp listings to see when new files show up, then ftp it out.
• Use smbclient (comes with most samba implementations) to do much the same
• If your OS supports it, samba mount the shared filesystem and then treat it like a local one

You'll want to think about move vs copy as well, also consider doing filesize comparisons after copying the file to make sure you have it complete before deleting it from the share.

Thanks mate. We have smbclient set up and I am able to move/copy files onto unix machine periodically. But what i want to do is to run this command once when file is available on the shared drive and then move the files to unix machine. is this possible? any hints?

The main problem you'll have is telling when the file has finished writing out to your shared drive. Periodically doing a file list will show you when it appears but you may jump in and grab half a file that way. If you have control of the process that's creating the file you are looking for, have it write to one file (with a suffix something like '.part') then rename it once it's finished writing it out.
If you don't have control of the creation process, you will need to either rely on timing (ie see the file appear, wait X seconds, then copy it, test the file size, then delete), but that's very dangerous of course.
If you know what the 'proper; file size will be, you can have your watcher script look only for new files that are also of the correct size, but that's not always a luxury you'll have.