[Discuss] Reading Linux book

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 10:39 AM, Daniel Barrett
<dbarrett at blazemonger.com> wrote:
> On March 27, 2014, Mike Small quoth:
>>    First, a big warning: By checking /etc into version control, you are
>>    creating a copy of files like /etc/shadow that must remain
>>    secret.  [...]
>
> This is one reason I use the "sparse tree" method I mentioned
> yesterday, which versions only the files that one cares about. I don't
> see much reason to version /etc/shadow or other data files that are
> usually updated by tools and rarely modified by text editing.

The problem I see with this is that it is possible for those rare
modifications to break things in ways that aren't apparent for some
time.   If you didn't track those changes it can be difficult to
figure out what the previous working state of the system was.   I
maintain that the minimal cost in disk space is repaid if it makes
fixing a problem like this easier just one time in the life of a
system.

Bill Bogstad