Detect changes in a file

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi all
Just curious , is it possible to detect changes in a file and sent to email .

For ex: demo.conf

I would like to receive an email everytime a particular file(demo.conf) changes and the content added/removed and who did the change (userid). Is it possible.

Thanks
CK

2

Yes and no!

You can easily write a script that polls the file statistics every so often and looks for change from the last poll. If the file's changed you can then compare the current file to a previously saved version and email out the differences.
What you can't do is tell who made the change - that info isn't stored.

3

you can use tools like md5sum, md5,sha1 to check for changes. as for who did it, one of the ways is to turn on auditing on your platform.

4

In many years of being a Unix user, I've never come across platform auditing! Can you provide some background please?

5

if you are in Solaris platform, you can turn on BSM. If in Linux, then turn on audit daemon ( auditd)