my to do maintain /etc on all servers with git/hg

Maintain /etc with mercurial on Debian
Here is another one with git this time

here is article copy pasted (site seems to be down)

Anyway, here is how you can track your /etc directory with git, and have apt update it
automatically each time a package is installed.

The following steps require root access:

• install git

  
  
  

  apt-get install git-core
  




• initialize /etc to be a git repo

  
  
  

  cd /etc
  git init-db
  chmod og-rwx .git
  




• ignore a few files

  
  
  

  cat > .gitignore
  *~
  *.dpkg-new
  *.dpkg-old
  




• commit the current state

  
  
  

  git add .
  git commit -a -m"initial import"
  




• install a snapshot script for apt to call

  
  
  

  cat > apt/git-snapshot-script
  #!/bin/bash
  set -e
  caller=$(ps axww | grep "^ *$$" -B3 | grep " apt-get " | head -n1 | sed 's/^.*\(apt-get .*\)/\1/' )
  git-add .
  git-commit -a -m"snapshot after: $caller"
  

  
  
  

  ... make it executable ...

  
  
  

  chmod +x apt/git-snapshot-script
  




• configure apt to track changes

  
  
  

  cat >> /etc/apt/apt.conf
  DPkg {
           Post-Invoke {"cd /etc ; ./apt/git-snapshot-script";};
  }
  




• track these two files

  
  
  

  git add .
  git commit -a -m"apt will track /etc automagically using git"
  

... and you're done.

Note that the chmod og-rwx /etc/.git step is very important. Your /etc/.git directory should
only be accessible to root. If not, it's as good as giving everyone access to your /etc/shadow
and other secrets that hide in /etc. Should you clone this repository to another box, you
have to make sure that the same precautions are taken.

Now when you install a package, it will be tracked in the git repository.

    # apt-get install mercurial
   ...
   Created commit daa7de7264b65cd073a1ef0f75ba50aa488d5af2
    3 files changed, 409 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
    create mode 100644 bash_completion.d/mercurial
    create mode 100644 mercurial/hgrc
    create mode 100644 mercurial/hgrc.d/hgext.rc

You can see what changed...

    # git whatchanged -1
   commit daa7de7264b65cd073a1ef0f75ba50aa488d5af2
   Author: Bart Trojanowski <bart@jukie.net>
   Date:   Mon Mar 12 16:09:18 2007 -0400

       snapshot after: apt-get install mercurial

   :000000 100644 0000000... a7f4740... A  bash_completion.d/mercurial
   :000000 100644 0000000... dfc3400... A  mercurial/hgrc
   :000000 100644 0000000... 8f2d526... A  mercurial/hgrc.d/hgext.rc

And lastly, it should be noted that debian now has an etckeeper that trackes /etc in git.

ps: i started with /etc/httpd and works well with git