How to watch a file, who accesses or uses

Question

I am looking forward a way to watch a file to get following information

• Which process does open, read, write it?
• When?
• Result. (e.g. can they write on it, or can they read it, etc.)

Strace helps us to watch which files a process opens, but how can I watch a file when multiple processes access it? What is your recommendation?

Answer 1

If it's just a few files this might be a better solution than turning on auditing.

http://inotify.aiken.cz/

This includes incron, a deamon that will watch an inode and take action when there is a change to the inode.