About

config-tracker is a way of keeping track of changes to server configuration files (or any files). It will periodically check for changes to /etc (and other defineable locations), store those changes in git and email a notification to the server admins.

Quick-start

Download

cd /usr/local
git clone git://github.com/dansimau/config-tracker.git config-tracker

Configure

Create and edit the configuration file to review the defaults and change the email address that notifications will be sent to:

cp /usr/local/config-tracker/config-tracker.conf.dist /usr/local/config-tracker/config-tracker.conf
vim /usr/local/config-tracker/config-tracker.conf

Optionally configure the files that are being tracked:

vim /usr/local/config-tracker/include.conf

Install

Run init to initialise and configure the repository. This will also install a crontab entry into /etc/cron.d/config-tracker and do an initial sync and commit of all the files you are going to track.

/usr/local/config-tracker/config-tracker init

And you're done. By default, an update will be run every 10 minutes from cron and a notification email will be sent with a summary of changes to any files.

Test it yourself

Make some changes to some files and then manually run an update to sync and commit all the changed files:

/usr/local/config-tracker/config-tracker update

You should receive an email with a summary of the changes:

To: dsimmons@squiz.co.uk
Subject: [config tracker] shared-php5 commit: d234d1e - etc/foo
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:14:14 +0100 (BST)
From: root@shared-php5.squiz.co.uk (root)

commit d234d1eff3587bfaee20f821f6c0653ef5db7ddf
Author: root <root@shared-php5.(none)>
Date:   Fri Aug 12 19:14:14 2011 +0100

    M	etc/foo

diff --git a/etc/foo b/etc/foo
index e69de29..3e20166 100644
--- a/etc/foo
+++ b/etc/foo
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+# changed my config file yeah

Editing the email

You can change the notification email by modifying the file contrib/post-commit:

vim /usr/local/config-tracker/contrib/post-commit

And then run an init to reinstall the post-commit hook (this is not harmful):

/usr/local/config-tracker/config-tracker init

Requirements

• bash 3+
• rsync 3+
• git (tested with 1.5.4.3 and 1.7.3.4)