There are two different ways I fell into this, there may be more. But it means if you have some sort of automated check to see if your Directory Watcher is working it falsely reports a status of running.

The first way is to add a new Directory Watcher Event Gateway in the Lucee Admin. If you add a directory to watch that does not exist it gives you and error and does not save. However if you add a Listener Component CFC that it cannot find it does not give you and error and shows as running. It will log the issue but otherwise for all appearances looks like it is running.

The second way is if you create a new Directory Watcher via code (i.e. the admin tag/function). In this case you can save both a bad directory to watch and a bad listener. It will not give you an error and will appear as running. It will correctly log both issues but if you think it is running you might not check the logs to see what is wrong.

Obviously with testing etc... both of these issues should be pretty readily apparent after realizing that despite Lucee telling you it is running when it is not. But still it should not report a status of running when it is not. And as I said if you have an established process where you monitor the health of the Directory Watcher and something goes wrong you should be able to get the proper status.