Etckeeper Setup

Introduction

• 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

  

  Tip

  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.

  

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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