[clug] Putting a server's config under CVS by snarfing /etc

[Steven Hanley]

On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 03:46:44PM +1000, Michael.James at csiro.au wrote:
> Living, as I do, outside the Debian umbrella,
>  I'm faced with periodic OS upgrades.
> 
> Upgrading tends to leave cruft so I always do clean installs.
> At a minimum, I preserve a seperate /home partition
>  with a copy of the old /etc/directory in it.
> 
> Then comes the nightmare of re-implementing
>  all the config changes that defined that machine.
> 
> What I want to do is put the whole /etc/ directory under CVS.
> (A cron job would take nightly snapshots
>  and capture any un-comitted changes.)
> 
> That way the nightmare becomes
>  a systematic CVS merge operation,
>  bringing the old /etc branch back onto the new install.
> Then CVS will hold the differences from a stock Suse install
>  for system recovery.
> 
> Useful also when there are multiple sysadmins,
>  (or one absent-minded one).
> 
> Anyone played with something like this?
> How would CVS cope with the web of links in /etc/init.d?
> 
> michaelj

Simon Horms did this for the isp cia.net.au when he worked  there a few
years back (dont know if he still works there), he presented a paper about
it at CALU (melbourne LCA in 1999). You may want to get hold of the paper
and possibly have a chat to Horms.

	See You
	    Steve

-- 
sjh at wibble.net http://svana.org/sjh
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