RE: tracking changes to system config files?

[Arthur Barrett]

Gary,

> CentOS, Sun Solaris, SGI Irix, and SGI Altix/SuSE.  To track
> local config changes, we create RCS directories in the root
> hierachy (mainly under /etc) and check our changes in/out
> using RCS.  It's never been a great solution, but at least
.
.
.
> Do you have an opinion on the proposed CVS method, or suggestions
> on better methods for tracking changes to system config files?

If they are the same files on each host (or mostly so) I'd use branch
names for the hosts rather than separate modules, then I could easily
look for differences between configs.

This is a different aspect of CM from SCM - you may be interested in
reading 'comp.software.config-mgmt' since this is a topic that comes up
time and again there.

I personally would expect such a solution to regularly check for changes
and take appropriate action if the files are out of sync (eg: send an
e-mail, automatically fix etc).  A cron 'cvs diff' should do this pretty
easily.

Regards,


Arthur