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Re: Modified Config Files



On 12/17/06, Rick Thomas <rbthomas55@pobox.com> wrote:

On Dec 17, 2006, at 5:32 AM, Chris Stork wrote:

> Douglas Tutty wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 04:52:19AM +0100, Chris Stork wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> What would be an easy way to list the config files that have been
>>> changed on my system?
>>>
>> Find a file that was created/modified when you installed.  Note that
>> date.
>> Use find to find all files in /etc/ newer than that date.
>
> If it was that easy...  I am talking about systems that received
> hundreds of updates already so that file dates differ a lot.
>
> In any case, none of this bookkeeping should be necessary since the
> package DB knows the default content (or the hash thereof) of
> config files.
>
>> Why?
>
> Firstly, I just want to know how much these systems are customized
> and what exactly has been customized.
> Secondly, I'd like to distribute some of these customizations to
> other systems.

This is a common problem for me.  I'm not the kind of sysadmin who
takes copious notes on everything I do.  But when I finally get it
right, I need to be able to get the same rightness everywhere.

It would be really cool if there were a well documented, simple,
incantation that I could use to get the list of all configuration
changes made to a system.  I wouldn't mind if it took some time to
run.  It just needs to be accurate and complete.


Before you edit any config file for the first time, make a copy of the
file with .orig appended to the name.  Then, for any config file that
has a corresponding .orig file, you can run diff on it.



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