[Discuss] Reading Linux book

[Mike Small]

Bill Bogstad <bogstad at pobox.com> writes:
> Some Linux distributions make available a package called etckeeper

>From http://git.kitenet.net/?p=etckeeper.git;a=blob_plain;f=README;hb=HEAD
...
    ## security warnings

    First, a big warning: By checking /etc into version control, you are
    creating a copy of files like /etc/shadow that must remain
    secret. Anytime you have a copy of a secret file, it becomes more likely
    that the file contents won't remain secret. etckeeper is careful about
    file permissions, and will make sure that repositories it sets up don't
    allow anyone but root to read their contents. However, you *also* must
    take care when cloning or copying these repositories, not to allow
    anyone else to see the data.

Hmmm!

Of course for a while I was using plain old git on /etc until it
dawned on me how incredibly stupid that is.  Now I'm thinking
config files are better suited to backing up and/or snapshotting
than version control. VC is not for everything even if it's
theoretically possible to wrap it in scripts to kludge away the
problems. Config files, ideally, for the most part, converge
relatively quickly to a more or less final state don't they?  I
used to think I wanted to see the history of their evolution but
it turns out all I want is a copy of what worked.

-- 
Mike Small
smallm at panix.com