All inotify filesystem events are chmod/attribute events

[vansante]

Description

As reported here by @ploxiln colima only seems to forward ATTRIB events, even when actually modifying files.

See this log:

root@843c34dbbfff:/container# inotifywait -m .
Setting up watches.
Watches established.
./ ATTRIB main.go
./ ATTRIB main.go

I have a file watcher utility that ignores these and only recompiles on modify events, so it would be nice if this could be addressed.

Version

colima version && limactl --version && qemu-img --version
colima version 0.8.1
git commit: 96598cc5b64e5e9e1e64891642b91edc8ac49d16

runtime: docker
arch: aarch64
client: v27.4.1
server: v27.4.0
limactl version 1.0.3
zsh: command not found: qemu-img

(I do not use qemu but vz and rosetta)

Operating System

• macOS Intel <= 13 (Ventura)
• macOS Intel >= 14 (Sonoma)
• Apple Silicon <= 13 (Ventura)
• Apple Silicon >= 14 (Sonoma)
• Linux

Output of colima status

colima status
INFO[0000] colima is running using macOS Virtualization.Framework
INFO[0000] arch: aarch64
INFO[0000] runtime: docker
INFO[0000] mountType: virtiofs
INFO[0000] socket: unix:///Users/pvansanten/.colima/default/docker.sock

Reproduction Steps

1. Start a container with inotify-tools installed and a mount from the host machine
2. Exec into the container and run inotifywait -m -r .
3. On the host machine go to the mounted directory and run: touch test && echo hello >> test
4. Notice the events from the inotifywait command:

inotifywait -m -r .
Setting up watches.  Beware: since -r was given, this may take a while!
Watches established.
./ ATTRIB test

Expected behaviour

I expect the container inotifywait command to issue 2 events:

• A creation event for the file
• A modification event for the file

I do not expect an attribute event

Additional context

No response

[redecs]

I'm considering switching to Colima and encountered the same issue with ATTRIB/CHMOD in environment like the one described above.

[vansante]

After taking a peek at the code, I see that we are replicating the events by doing a chmod call in the VM OS:

https://github.com/abiosoft/colima/blob/main/daemon/process/inotify/events.go#L104

Maybe it would work better if we instead used this command instead?

echo "" >> {filepath}

Which triggers the following events on my local machine:

inotifywait -m .
./ OPEN file.txt
./ MODIFY file.txt
./ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE file.txt

Of course it makes sense to do something similar written in native go, like issuing a file.Write() with an empty byte buffer.