Tracking installs

[MallarJ@aol.com]

There's a nifty little program PCMag wrote for Win that tracks installations,
and I'd like to have this functionality in Linux.  Before I write my own, is
there a utility that will do the same thing?

Basically, the software gets an image of your disks, and saves copies of
important files (the registry and such).  Then you run your install, and re-
run the program. It then reports files added, deleted and changed, and shows
you changes to your important files. 

I suppose the LInux version would get your directory lists, save copies of
files in /etc and then do the compares after installation.  

Any thoughts?