[clug] Subversion for sysadmin tasks

Michael Cohen michael.cohen at netspeed.com.au
Mon Jul 31 11:56:27 GMT 2006


Tony,
  One of the most attractive things about using an RCS for this sort of thing
  is that every change can be labeled. For example if someone changes a whole
  lot of files on a system for a particular reason that can be documented in
  the changelog. This is useful on a system where you have lots of admins, each
  might handle a different ticket at different times. It can then be proven
  what each change was for and who did it. 

  I dont personally use RCS for this but this discussion comes up commonly.
  People on the DARCS list claim to use it occassionally (although darcs also
  does not support permissions). Usually people write various scripts to fix
  permissions up upon check in/out.

Michael.

On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 09:16:48PM +1000, Tony and Robyn Lewis wrote:
> Steve Granger wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >I'm looking to get an idea of some of the best practices that people
> >follow for using subversion (or CVS... or even RCS) for assisting
> >systems maintenance. I'm looking to maintain files in /etc to start off
> >with.
> >  
> 
> I don't think a (generic) RCS is what you want - not only for the 
> permission issue you've come up with, but because RCSs tend to have the 
> repository *elsewhere*.  That means that if you want to make a change, 
> you have to either use /etc as your working copy, and you keep checking 
> it in, or you have /etc as a read-only copy, and you have to check out a 
> working copy, make changes, check in, and update your working copy.  
> Turns into a lot of work.
> 
> My solution is to use rdiff-backup.
> 
> It's a great revisioning backup tool, handles permissions and user 
> groups, and can work over ssh.  Thus your /etc is your master copy, and 
> every time you make a significant change (or using cron) you can make 
> another backup.  You can set rules like, keep 6 copies or 6 months worth 
> of versions.
> 
> Tony
> 
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