Improving the reliability of file system monitoring tools (Collabora blog)

Gabriel Krisman Bertazi describesthe new FAN_FS_ERROR event type added to the fanotifymechanism in 5.16.

This is why we worked on a new mechanism for closely monitoringvolumes and notifying recovery tools and sysadmins in real-timethat an error occurred. The feature, merged in kernel 5.16, won'tprevent failures from happening, but will help reduce the effectsof such errors by guaranteeing any listener application receivesthe message. A monitoring application can then reliably report itto system administrators and forward the detailed error informationto whomever is unlucky enough to be tasked with fixing it.