The best way to skin a cat OR how do I get file system info on the most basic level? Post: 302278925

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Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users The best way to skin a cat OR how do I get file system info on the most basic level? Post 302278925 by mph on Wednesday 21st of January 2009 01:39:35 PM

01-21-2009

Registered User

The best way to skin a cat OR how do I get file system info on the most basic level?

Hi,

We have an FTP server (vsftpd) running on Linux, that I've kinda built a "Data Management" system around. I could use some ideas as to the best way to handle/create "triggers" for file notifications.

Internal users drag 'n drop files from their Windows boxes to the server via Samba mounts. FTP users transfer files via FTP (go figure). Programs run every five minutes to check for new files. Internal files are checked by first checking the filesystem size for changes, if so, then using the find command on the FTP directory and comparing it to the previous run. On the FTP side the program checks the log file for newly transferred files.
From the difference between the two it generates an email to the proper internal & external people telling them that there are files and what the names are. Also CCing FTPadmin group, then updates a database with all the info.

Ok now that you know how the files are transferred. My questions are as follows;

1) Internal Transfers. Is there a better way to find new files than using the find and comparing the differences? We've hit the 400 user mark and at peek times running find and parsing the output can be a bit slow.

2) FTP Transfers. What's the best way to determine when an FTP transaction is complete. Keep in mind that I'll have to track multiple connections starting and ending at different times.

As to question #2, I've written a simple packet sniffer in C which does nothing more than let me know when an FTP connection has been established and from what IP, then lets me know when that connection has terminated so another program can generate notifications. The problem with this is; FTP users are using arbitrary "Keep Alives" making it virtually impossible to determine inactivity to be able to disconnect the user. To add to the complexity, the FTP server is using SSL encryption so dumping the packets to determine their contents and file progress is useless. Also, I could have vsftpd log ALL FTP events to the log file but the increase would more than triple the log file size again slowing things down to a crawl.

Thank You in Advance

mph

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LEARN ABOUT OPENDARWIN

gzexe

GZEXE(1)						      General Commands Manual							  GZEXE(1)

NAME

       gzexe - compress executable files in place

SYNOPSIS

       gzexe [ name ...  ]

DESCRIPTION

       The  gzexe  utility  allows you to compress executables in place and have them automatically uncompress and execute when you run them (at a
       penalty in performance).  For example if you execute ``gzexe /bin/cat'' it will create the following two files:
	   -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  bin   9644 Feb 11 11:16 /bin/cat
	   -r-xr-xr-x  1 bin   bin  24576 Nov 23 13:21 /bin/cat~
       /bin/cat~ is the original file and /bin/cat is the self-uncompressing executable file.  You can remove /bin/cat~ once  you  are	sure  that
       /bin/cat works properly.

       This utility is most useful on systems with very small disks.

OPTIONS

       -d     Decompress the given executables instead of compressing them.

SEE ALSO

       gzip(1), znew(1), zmore(1), zcmp(1), zforce(1)

CAVEATS

       The  compressed	executable  is a shell script. This may create some security holes. In particular, the compressed executable relies on the
       PATH environment variable to find gzip and some other utilities (tail, chmod, ln, sleep).

BUGS

       gzexe attempts to retain the original file attributes on the compressed executable, but you may have to fix them manually  in  some  cases,
       using chmod or chown.

																	  GZEXE(1)

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