The configuration file consists of statements and comments.
There are three classes of lexical tokens: keywords, values, and
separators. Blanks, tabs, newlines and comments, collectively called
white space are ignored except as they serve to separate tokens. Some
white space is required to separate otherwise adjacent keywords and
values.
Comments may appear anywhere where white space may appear in the
configuration file. There are two kinds of comments: single-line and
multi-line comments. Single-line comments start with # or //
and continue to the end of the line:
# This is a comment
// This too is a comment
Multi-line or C-style comments start with the
two characters /* (slash, star) and continue until the first
occurrence of */ (star, slash).
Multi-line comments cannot be nested. However, single-line
comments may well appear within multi-line ones.
Pragmatic comments are similar to the usual single-line comments,
except that they cause some changes in the way the configuration is parsed.
Pragmatic comments begin with a # sign and end with the next physical
newline character.
- #include <FILE>
- #include FILE
- Include the contents of the file FILE. If FILE is an
absolute file name, the named file is included. An error message will be
issued if it does not exist.
If FILE contains wildcard characters (*,
[, ], or ?), it is interpreted as a shell globbing
pattern and all files matching that pattern are included, in
lexicographical order. If no matching files are found, the directive is
replaced with an empty line.
Otherwise, the form with angle brackets searches for file in
the include search path, while the second one looks for it in the
current working directory first, and, if not found there, in the include
search path. If the file is not found, an error message will be
issued.
The order of directories is as follows. First, direvent
scans any directories given with -I options, in the same order as
given on the command line, and then the directories in the standard
include search path. The latter is defined at compile time and can be
inspected in the output of the --help option.
- #include_once <FILE>
- #include_once FILE
- Same as #include, except that, if the FILE (or any of the
files it expands to) has already been included, it will not be included
again.
- #line num
- #line num "FILE"
- This line causes the parser to believe, for purposes of error diagnostics,
that the line number of the next source line is given by num and
the current input file is named by FILE. If the latter is absent,
the remembered file name does not change.
- # num "FILE"
- This is a special form of the #line statement, understood for
compatibility with the C preprocessor.
A simple statement consists of a keyword and value
separated by any amount of whitespace. Simple statement is terminated with a
semicolon (;).
The following is a simple statement:
pidfile /var/run/direvent.pid;
See below for a list of valid simple statements.
A value can be one of the following:
- number
- A number is a sequence of decimal digits.
- boolean
- A boolean value is one of the following: yes, true, t
or 1, meaning true, and no, false, nil,
0 meaning false.
- unquoted
string
- An unquoted string may contain letters, digits, and any of the following
characters: _, -, ., /, @, *,
:.
- quoted
string
- A quoted string is any sequence of characters enclosed in double-quotes
("). A backslash appearing within a quoted string introduces
an escape sequence, which is replaced with a single character
according to the following rules:
Sequence Expansion ASCII
\\ \ 134
\" " 042
\a audible bell 007
\b backspace 010
\f form-feed 014
\n new line 012
\r charriage return 015
\t horizontal tabulation 011
\v vertical tabulation 013
In addition, the sequence \newline is removed
from the string. This allows one to split long strings over several
physical lines, e.g.:
"a long string may be\
split over several lines"
If the character following a backslash is not one of those
specified above, the backslash is ignored and a warning is issued.
Two or more adjacent quoted strings are concatenated, which
gives another way to split long strings over several lines to improve
readability. The following fragment produces the same result as the
example above:
"a long string may be"
" split over several lines"
- Here-document
- A here-document is a special construct that allows one to introduce
strings of text containing embedded newlines.
The <<word construct instructs the parser
to read all the following lines up to the line containing only
word, with possible trailing blanks. Any lines thus read are
concatenated together into a single string. For example:
<<EOT
A multiline
string
EOT
The body of a here-document is interpreted the same way as a
double-quoted string, unless word is preceded by a backslash
(e.g. <<\EOT) or enclosed in double-quotes, in which case
the text is read as is, without interpretation of escape sequences.
If word is prefixed with - (a dash), then all
leading tab characters are stripped from input lines and the line
containing word. Furthermore, - is followed by a single
space, all leading whitespace is stripped from them. This allows one to
indent here-documents in a natural fashion. For example:
<<- TEXT
The leading whitespace will be
ignored when reading these lines.
TEXT
It is important that the terminating delimiter be the only
token on its line. The only exception to this rule is allowed if a
here-document appears as the last element of a statement. In this case a
semicolon can be placed on the same line with its terminating delimiter,
as in:
help-text <<-EOT
A sample help text.
EOT;
- list
- A comma-separated list of values, enclosed in parentheses. The following
example shows a statement whose value is a list of strings:
option (wait, stderr);
In any context where a list is appropriate, a single value is
allowed without being a member of a list: it is equivalent to a list
with a single member. This means that, e.g.
option wait;
is equivalent to
option (wait);
A block statement introduces a logical group of statements. It
consists of a keyword, followed by an optional value, called a tag,
and a sequence of statements enclosed in curly braces, as shown in the
example below:
watcher {
path /etc;
event create;
}
The closing curly brace may be followed by a semicolon, although
this is not required.
Arguments of some statements undergo macro expansion before use.
During the macro expansion any occurrence of ${NAME} is replaced by
the value of macro NAME. Macro names follow the usual convention:
they begin with a letter and contain letters digits and underscores. The
curly braces around the NAME are optional. They are required only if
the macro reference is followed by a character that is not to be interpreted
as part of its name, as in ${command}string.
The following macros are defined:
- file
- Name of the file covered by the event.
- genev_code
- Generic (system-independent) event code. It is a bitwise OR of the
event codes represented as a decimal number.
- genev_name
- Generic event name. If several generic events are reported simultaneously,
the value of this variable is a list of event names separated by space
characters. Each name corresponds to a bit in genev_code.
- self_test_pid
- The PID of the external command started with the --self-test
(-T) option. If direvent is started without this option,
this variable is not defined.
- sysev_code
- System-dependent event code. It is a bitwise OR of the event codes
represented as a decimal number.
- sysev_name
- System-dependent event name. If several events are reported, the value of
this variable is a list of event names separated by space characters. Each
name corresponds to a bit in sysev_code. See the section SYSTEM
DEPENDENCIES in direvent(8), for a list of system-dependent
event names.
- user
NAME;
- Sets the user to run as. NAME must be a name of an existing
user.
- foreground
BOOL;
- Run in foreground.
- pidfile
FILE;
- Upon successful startup store the PID of the daemon process in
FILE.
- debug
NUMBER;
- Set debug level. Valid NUMBER values are 0 (no debug) to
3 (maximum verbosity).
While connected to the terminal direvent outputs its
diagnostics and debugging messages to the standard error. After
disconnecting from the controlling terminal it closes the first three file
descriptors and directs all its output to the syslog. When running in
foreground mode, its messages are sent both to the standard error and to the
syslog.
The following configuration statement controls the syslog
output:
syslog {
facility STRING;
tag STRING;
print-priority BOOL;
}
The statements are:
- facility
STRING;
- Set syslog facility. STRING is one of the following:
user, daemon, auth or authpriv, mail,
cron, local0 through local7 (case-insensitive), or a
facility number.
- tag
STRING;
- Tag syslog messages with STRING. Normally the messages are tagged
with the program name.
- print-priority
BOOL;
- Prefix each message with its priority.
An example syslog statement:
syslog {
facility local0;
print-priority yes;
}
The watcher statement configures a single event watcher. A
watcher can control several events in multiple pathnames. Any number of
watcher statements is allowed in the configuration file, each one of
them declaring a separate watcher.
watcher {
path PATHNAME [recursive [NUMBER]];
file STRING-LIST;
event STRING-LIST;
command STRING;
user NAME;
timeout NUMBER;
option STRING-LIST;
environ ENV-SPEC;
}
The statements within a watcher block are:
- path PATHNAME
[recursive [NUMBER]];
- Defines a pathname to watch. PATHNAME must be the name of an
existing directory in the file system. The watcher will watch events
occurring for all files within that directory. If the optional
recursive clause is specified, this directory will be watched
recursively, i.e. when any subdirectory is created in it, direvent
will set up a watcher for files in this subdirectory. This new watcher
will be an exact copy of the parent watcher, excepting for the pathnames.
The optional NUMBER parameter defines a cut-off nesting level for
recursive watching. If supplied, the recursive behaviour will apply only
to the directories that are nested below that level.
Any number of path statements can appear in a
watcher block. At least one path must be defined.
- file STRING-LIST;
- Selects which files are eligible for monitoring. The argument is a list of
globbing patterns (in the sense of fnmatch(3)) and/or extended
regular expressions ( regex(7)) one of which the file name must
match in order for the watcher to act on it. Regular expressions must be
surrounded by a pair of slashes, optionally followed by the following
flags:
- b
- Use basic regular expressions.
- i
- Enable case-insensitive matching.
A pattern or regular expression prefixed with ! matches
file names that don't match the pattern without !.
- event
STRING-LIST;
- Configures the filesystem events to watch for in the directories declared
by the path statements. The argument is a list of event names. Both
generic and system-dependent event namess are allowed. Multiple
event statements accumulate. A missing event statements
means watch all events. For example:
- command
STRING;
- Defines a command to execute on event. STRING is a command line
just as you would type it in sh(1). It may contain macro
variables, which will be expanded prior to execution. For
example:
command "/bin/prog -event $genev_name -file $file";
- See the section HANDLER ENVIRONMENT in direvent(8), for a
detailed discussion of how the command is executed.
- user
STRING;
- Run command as this user.
- timeout
NUMBER;
- Terminate the command if it runs longer than NUMBER seconds. The
default is 5 seconds.
- option
STRING-LIST;
- A list of additional options. The following options are defined:
- shell
- Invoke the handler command as /bin/sh -c
"command".
- wait
- Wait for the program to terminate before handling next event from the
event queue. Normally the program runs asynchronously.
- stdout
- Capture the standard output of the command and redirect it to the
syslog with the LOG_INFO priority.
- stderr
- Capture the standard error of the command and redirect it to the
syslog with the LOG_ERR priority.
- environ
ENV-SPEC;
- Modify command environment. By default the command inherits the
environment of direvent augmented with the following
variables:
- DIREVENT_SYSEV_CODE
- The system-dependent event code (see the ${sysev_code}
variable).
- DIREVENT_SYSEV_NAME
- The system-dependent event name or names (see the ${sysev_name}
variable).
- DIREVENT_GENEV_CODE
- The generic event code (see the ${genev_code} variable).
- DIREVENT_GENEV_NAME
- The generic event name or names (see the ${genev_name}
variable).
- DIREVENT_FILE
- The name of the affected file relative to the current working directory
(see the ${file} variable).
- The environ statement allows for trimming the environment. Its
argument is a list of one or more of the folloeing environment
modification directives:
- - (a single dash)
- Clear the inherited environment, but retain the variables added by
direvent. The removed environment variables can be selectively
restored by the directives that follow. This must be the first directive
in the list.
- -- (double-dash)
- Clear the entire environment, including the variables added by
direvent. This must be the first directive in the list.
- -NAME
- Unset the variable NAME.
- -NAME=VAL
- Unset the environment variable NAME only if its value is
VAL.
- NAME
- Restore the environment variable NAME. This directive is useful
after - or -- to retain some variables from the
environment.
- NAME=VALUE
- Define environment variable NAME to the VALUE. VALUE
can contain macro variables, which will be expanded prior to the
assignment.
- NAME+=VALUE
- Retain the variable NAME and append VALUE to its existing
value. If no such variable is present in the environment, it will be
created and assigned the VALUE. If VALUE begins with a
punctuation character, this character is removed from it before the
assignment. This is convenient for using this construct with environment
variables like PATH, e.g.:
- In this example, if PATH exists, :/sbin will be appended to
it. Otherwise, it will be created and assigned the value
/sbin.
- The VALUE can contain macro variables, which will be expanded prior
to the assignment.
- NAME=+VALUE
- Retain the variable NAME and prepend VALUE to its existing
value. If no such variable is present in the environment, it will be
created and assigned the VALUE. In this case, if VALUE ends
with a punctuation character, this character will be removed from it
before the assignment.
- The VALUE can contain macro variables, which will be expanded prior
to the assignment.
Copyright © 2012, 2013 Sergey Poznyakoff
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO
WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.