The aim of this study is to investigate if there is a way a computer can accurately and automatically react on altered configuration file(s) with a minimum of resource utilization and by what means the developer(s) of an application can perform a check of the altered configuration file for their application.

In a typical GNU/Linux installation the configuration files are literally counted by the thousands, monitoring these files is a task that for the most part exceeds any system administrator's abilities. Each file has its own syntax that needs to be known by the administrator. Either one of these two tasks could give any system administrator nightmares concerning the difficulty level especially when both tasks are combined. The system administrator could attempt to automate the monitoring tasks together with the syntax checking.

There are some tools in the repositories of each distribution for monitoring files but none that lets one monitor and take (predefined or user defined) actions based on what the file monitor reports, the type of file and its contents.

A complete tool is not presented in this study, merely a proof of concept that monitoring and taking actions especially with version 2.6.13 (or newer) kernel of GNU/Linux with plugins are quite possible with relatively small computer resource.

During this study some questions arose that are worth taking into consideration when a complete monitoring tool is to be developed, amongst others they are: add a trusted user, add both textual and graphical user interface, monitor more than one file path.

This study was performed on GNU/Linux CentOS 6 distribution, all programming was done in BASH with an effort to minimize used/installed programs.