1. FAM, the File Alteration Monitor, provides a daemon and an API which applications can use for notification of changes in specific files ordirectories. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

2. File Alteration Monitor FAM monitors files and directories, notifying interested applications of changes. This package provides a server that can monitor a given list of files and notify applications through a socket. If the imon pseudo device driver is loaded into the kernel, it notifies FAM. Otherwise it has to poll the files' status. FAM can also provide a RPC service for monitoring remote files (such as on a mounted NFS filesystem). From Debian 3.0r0 APT