Etckeeper Setup

• Etckeeper is a tool designed to help you manage and track changes to your configuration files in the /etc directory. Using Git as its backend, Etckeeper allows you to version control your configuration files, making it easier to monitor and revert changes if necessary.
• In this guide, I will show you how to set up Etckeeper on your system and start tracking changes to your configuration files.

Step 1: Install Etckeeper

• The first step is to install Etckeeper on your system. You can do this by running the following commands:

  • For Debian/Ubuntu:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install etckeeper
    

  • For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora:

    sudo yum update
    sudo yum install etckeeper
    

    • 

Step 2: Initialize Etckeeper

• Once Etckeeper is installed, you need to initialize it by running the following command:

  sudo etckeeper init
  

  • 

• This will create a new Git repository in the /etc directory and start tracking changes to your configuration files. If you want to take a snapshot for daily autocommit, you can run the following command:

  sudo systemctl enable --now etckeeper.timer
  

  • 

Step 3: List Etckeeper Commits

• The timer in the previous step will create an initial commit at the beginning and continue to create auto-commits based on changes at certain times of the day. To check the status of your commits, you can run the following command:

  sudo etckeeper vcs log
  

  • 

Step 4: Create and Check Manual Commits

• In this step, I will install nginx package and create a manual commit to track the changes. You can do this by running the following commands:

  • For Debian/Ubuntu-based systems:

    sudo apt-get install nginx
    

  • For Red Hat-based systems:

    sudo yum install nginx
    

  • 

• After installing the package, you can check the status of your changes by running the following command:

  sudo etckeeper vcs status
  

  • 

• To create a manual commit, you can run the following command:

  sudo etckeeper commit "feat: install nginx package"
  

  • 

• Now, you can check the status of your commits by running the following command:

  sudo etckeeper vcs log
  

  • 

• If you check a specific file, you can run the following command: (For example, to check the changes in the /etc/passwd file)

  sudo etckeeper vcs diff HEAD~1 /etc/passwd
  

  • 

(Optional) Step 5: Connect Etckeeper to a Remote Repository

• If you want to store your configuration files in a remote Git repository, you can do so by following these steps:

  • Create a new private repository on GitHub or GitLab.

    • 

  • Add the remote repository to your Etckeeper configuration by running the following command:

    sudo etckeeper vcs remote add origin <repository-url>    #~ add your repository url
    sudo etckeeper vcs remote -v                             #~ check the remote repository
    

    • 

  • Push your changes to the remote repository by running the following command:

    sudo etckeeper vcs branch -M main                       #~ change the branch name to main
    sudo etckeeper vcs push -u origin main                  #~ push the changes to the remote repository
    

    • 

    Note

    If you are using etckeeper on multiple machines, I recommend using hostname or machine-id as the branch name. Or you can use hostname to create multiple git repositories.

  • Now, your configuration files will be stored in a remote Git repository, allowing you to access them from anywhere.

    • 

Conclusion

• Etckeeper is a powerful tool that allows you to track changes to your configuration files in the /etc directory. By using Git as its backend, Etckeeper makes it easy to monitor and revert changes when necessary. In this guide, I showed you how to set up Etckeeper on your system and start tracking changes to your configuration files.

References

• ArchWiki - Etckeeper