{"id":2828,"date":"2020-03-01T05:45:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T00:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.24x7serversupport.com\/blog\/?p=2828"},"modified":"2020-02-29T21:29:02","modified_gmt":"2020-02-29T15:59:02","slug":"how-to-monitor-files-on-your-linux-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.24x7serversupport.com\/blog\/how-to-monitor-files-on-your-linux-server\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Monitor Files On Your Linux Server"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You will\nsee one of the\nbasics of security<\/strong> for managing your web applications<\/strong> . The monitoring of changes to your files<\/strong> . Indeed\nif you have a site in production the modifications of the source files will be\nfew. And if there is, it will be easy for you to distinguish between your\nwork and a plugin update that you have carried out. You will see how in 5 minutes to set up this\nmonitoring<\/strong> . You will have basic surveillance, but oh\nhow effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you need ?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I reassure\nyou right away no\nneed to know how to program<\/strong> , or spend hours on your\nterminal. You are going to need an SSH client ( putty<\/a> on Windows), an\ne-mail box to receive alerts and that’s it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes,\nbecause this method\nis native to linux distributions so<\/strong> you will not need to\ninstall any additional library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will surveillance be set up with?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before\ngiving you the lines to copy \/ paste I will explain what you are going to\ndo. On your server you will create\na bash script<\/strong> (which is simply a file with the extension\n.sh). The script will contain the\nlinux command<\/strong> which will be used to list the modified\nfiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the\nfile is in place, all you have to do is add a rule to your server for the script to be launched periodically.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultra simple version of the script<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To\norganize yourself a bit, I advise you to create a “scripts” directory<\/strong> at\nthe root of root:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

mkdir \/root\/scripts<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
In this\ndirectory we will create our files which will be a bash script and a txt\nfile. The txt file will be used for sending by e-mail. First, let’s\ncreate our txt file:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch \/root\/scripts\/liste-fichiers-modifies.txt<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Here we\nare done then create our script to be able to modify it and insert the\nnecessary commands:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
nano \/root\/scripts\/monitoring_www.sh<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The nano\neditor will open if you are used to using another, it does not matter. You\nwill therefore be able to copy the following lines into the file and save it, I\nwill explain it right after their meanings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
#!\/bin\/bash\n #\n echo -e \"--------------------------------------- -------------------\n PHP, HTML & JS\n v 2.0\u00a0file monitoring program\n contact: https:\/\/www.kanjian.fr\n -------- -------------------------------------------------- \"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Subject = \"[SRV-001] File monitoring report: php, html, js, conf, htaccess\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
find \/var\/www\/ -name -ls -o -regex '. *. (php | htaccess | conf | html | js). *' -mtime 0 |\u00a0xargs ls -lah> modified-files-list.txt<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
mail -s \"$ Subject\" \"inazo@example.com\" <modified-files-list.txt<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Explanation of the main lines:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
#!\/bin\/bash:
 <\/strong>This line is used by the server to find out which language is used in the script, more precisely which shell it will use.\u00a0I invite you to read\u00a0the Wikipedia page on linux shells<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Subject\n= “[SRV-001] File monitoring report: php, html, js, conf, htaccess”:<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>This line defines the subject of the\nemail which will be sent as a report at the end of the script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
find \/var\/www\/ -name -ls -o -regex ‘. *. (php | htaccess | conf | html | js). *’ -mtime 0 |\u00a0xargs ls -lah> list-files-modified.txt:<\/strong>
 This penultimate line is the most complex.\u00a0The find command will fetch all the files found in the “\/var\/www\/” directory as well as these subdirectories.\u00a0The “-regex” option of the command will specify that we only want\u00a0files that include in their names<\/strong>\u00a0one of the following elements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n