Can etckeeper be used to track config files outside of /etc?

Solution 1:

I edited the above script to also include plain files.

maybe someone should add a possibility to configure this outside a script (in the etckeeper config?) and send this as a patch to joey hess?

#!/bin/sh
set -e

# Based on nealmcb's + ErebusBat's script from http://serverfault.com/questions/211425/

# If you want other configuration data or files on the system also
# opportunistically tracked via etckeeper, use this script to copy them in.

# If there is a hook of some sort available related to the files
# you're mirroring, you can call etckeeper directly and track them
# proactively, rather than just opportunistically here.

MIRROR_ROOT=/etc/etckeeper.mirror.d
echo "etckeeper: mirroring outside files to $MIRROR_ROOT/:"

mirror_dir() {
   LOCAL_PATH=$1
   echo "  $LOCAL_PATH"
   mkdir -p $MIRROR_ROOT/$LOCAL_PATH
   rsync -a --del $LOCAL_PATH/ $MIRROR_ROOT/$LOCAL_PATH
}

mirror_file() {
   LOCAL_PATH=$1
   DIRPATH=`dirname $LOCAL_PATH | head -n 1`
   echo "  $LOCAL_PATH"
   mkdir -p $MIRROR_ROOT/$DIRPATH
   rsync -a --del $LOCAL_PATH $MIRROR_ROOT/$DIRPATH
}
mirror_file "/var/srv/foo_bar/blog/config.py"
mirror_file "/var/srv/foo_bar_another_host/trac/conf/trac.ini"
mirror_file "/tmp/wildcards/*.jpg"

Solution 2:

etckeeper does allow you to integrate it with other systems.

I also wanted to track changes made by update-grub in /boot, so I put the code below in /etc/etckeeper/commit.d/20mirror-outside-files

This way any time etckeeper is called for other reasons (when I install software, sometimes nightly, etc), it will grab and track revisions in the latest grub configuration.

I invented the convention to put this stuff under /etc/Mirror/path-to-outside-file, e.g. /etc/Mirror/boot/grub/grub.cfg but if anyone has precedent for another such convention, I'd love to hear about it.

#!/bin/sh
set -e

# If you want other configuration data or files on the system also
# opportunistically tracked via etckeeper, use this script to copy them in.

# If there is a hook of some sort available related to the files
# you're mirroring, you can call etckeeper directly and track them
# proactively, rather than just opportunistically here.

echo etckeeper: mirroring outside files

mkdir -p /etc/Mirror/boot/grub
cp -p /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/Mirror/boot/grub

Update:

Note that for some reason etckeeper doesn't run this when you do an apt-get remove or purge, e.g. to delete an old kernel. Odd.... But you can run sudo etckeeper commit manually in that case, or after a manual update-grub.

---

Solution 3:

etckeeper now has a -d option to indicate on which directory it must operate.

While hooks to trigger etckeeper generally use construct as etckeeper pre-install, ..., you will have to add hooks that use etckeeper pre-install -d /boot/grub instead. This shall avoid file duplication in your approach.

Note that if you consider that systemd target, service, ..., files are configuration files (I do - after all, files under /lib/systemd are not that different from files under /etc/init.d) then this -d option will help you to keep track of what happen in /lib/systemd.