Etckeeper

Intro

Etckeeper (also at https://github.com/joeyh/etckeeper) is a great tool created by Joey Hess to use your favorite VCS to keep track of what's going on in /etc.

TLDR

sudo su -
apt-get install etckeeper
cd /etc/
# change VCS to 'git' by commenting out bzr; and uncomment git
vim etckeeper/etckeeper.conf

etckeeper init

Extending etckeeper

Say you want to keep track of changes to the configuration directory or file of some app. You also want to make it automatic and painless. Etckeeper leverages the commit hook in git to create that mirror. So, for example, the most critical aspect of your wiki is the LocalSettings.php configuration file. You don't want to commit the file to the version control of the project because it would expose sensitive data. etckeeper can be used to track changes to any file on the filesystem, but it's done discretely on the host.

git repos in the directories you want to track can cause problems. One useful addition is to filter out anything found in '.gitignore' per the discussion at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13713101/rsync-exclude-according-to-gitignore-hgignore-svnignore-like-filter-c Or, since this script is just using rsync, you can add your own special cases as rsync calls

vi /etc/etckeeper/commit.d/20mirror-outside-files

#!/bin/sh
set -e

# Greg Rundlett info@equality-tech.com
# based on code from http://serverfault.com/questions/211425

# If you want other configuration data or files on the system also
# opportunistically tracked via etckeeper, use this script to copy them in.

# If there is a hook of some sort available related to the files
# you're mirroring, (e.g. Apache restart) 
# you can call etckeeper directly and track them
# proactively, rather than just opportunistically here.

MIRROR_ROOT=/etc/etckeeper.mirror.d
echo "etckeeper: mirroring outside files to $MIRROR_ROOT/:"

mirror_dir() {
   LOCAL_PATH=$1
   echo "  $LOCAL_PATH"
   mkdir -p $MIRROR_ROOT/$LOCAL_PATH
   rsync -a --filter=':- .gitignore' $LOCAL_PATH/ $MIRROR_ROOT/$LOCAL_PATH
}

mirror_file() {
   LOCAL_PATH=$1
   DIRPATH=`dirname $LOCAL_PATH`
   echo "  $LOCAL_PATH"
   mkdir -p $MIRROR_ROOT/$DIRPATH
   rsync -a $LOCAL_PATH $MIRROR_ROOT/$DIRPATH
}

# special case where we don't want to mirror a sub-directory
# we could also add a dummy .gitignore to the 'bin' directory
rsync -a --exclude=ansible/ /home/greg/bin/ $MIRROR_ROOT/home/greg/bin/

###########################################
## ADD lines below to invoke the system ###
###########################################

mirror_file "/var/www/html/wiki/LocalSettings.php"
mirror_dir "/home/greg/data"
## Special case handled above
## mirror_dir "/home/greg/bin"

Version Control System