etckeeper is a collection of tools to let /etc be stored in a git, mercurial, darcs, or bzr repository. It hooks into apt (and other package managers including yum and pacman-g2) to automatically commit changes made to /etc during package upgrades. It tracks file metadata that revison control systems do not normally support, but that is important for /etc, such as the permissions of /etc/shadow. It's quite modular and configurable, while also being simple to use if you understand the basics of working with revision control.

etckeeper is available in git at git://git.kitenet.net/etckeeper, or in gitweb. It's packaged in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.

News

etckeeper 0.61 released with these changes

  • Fix up botched git-rm conffile removal from 0.58. The file could be in any of three states; absent, present, or .dpkg-dist. Finish fully removing it. Closes: #655836
Posted at lunch time on Saturday, January 14th, 2012

etckeeper 0.60 released with these changes

  • Updated Dutch translation of debconf templates. Closes: #654244
  • Support -h and --help. Closes: #654188
  • Fix typo in bugfix for #651168.
  • Improve yum hook to avoid running if etckeeper was just removed. Thanks, Mykola Marzhan
Posted Friday evening, January 6th, 2012

etckeeper 0.59 released with these changes

  • Add /etc/cups/subscriptions.conf to default ignores, as the content of this file does not normally contain configuration and it changes frequently. Closes: #651168
  • Shell quoting fix. Thanks, Daniel Hahler
Posted at noon on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011