systemd Path Unit Builder

Create a path watcher and its companion oneshot service. Nothing is executed or uploaded.

Generator only: review both files before installing them. Path activation uses inotify and does not observe changes made by other machines on remote NFS filesystems. Trigger-limit directives require systemd 250 or newer.

Path trigger

Unit base nameBase name only; matching .path and .service suffixes are added.

Description

Watch condition

Absolute paths or glob patternsOne per line, up to 32 unique paths. Globs are interpreted only by PathExistsGlob.

TriggerLimitIntervalSecFor example 500ms, 2s or 1min; 0 disables this limit.

TriggerLimitBurst0 or a positive integer up to 1,000,000.

MakeDirectory=true Include [Install] for multi-user.target

DirectoryModeFour-digit octal mode used only with MakeDirectory.

Companion oneshot service

Executable and argumentsOne argument per line. The executable must be absolute; empty arguments are unsupported.

Working directoryOptional absolute path.

Run as userOptional existing account name.

Generated units

incoming-files.path

Path unit

incoming-files.service

Service unit

Install both files in /etc/systemd/system, review them, then reload and enable the watcher:sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl enable --now incoming-files.path