Project Idea no. 5629

Another idea for a project I may or may never get around to completing (or in this case, starting):

• list of configuration files/binaries to “check”
• in the case of text-based configuration files, read the file into the database
• nightly, check the files to see if they’ve been modified (MD5sum)
• if the configuration file has been modified, diff it and the file already in the database
• put the output of diff into a database

This would allow an admin quick and easy access to view any changes made to the configuration structure of their machine.

Advantages over using CVS for monitoring

• automated, no chance of “forgetting” to check a change into CVS
• non-intrusive
• easy to view changes
• easier configuration, easier to roll out onto multiple servers
• “server roles” automatically selecting default packages - eg “Apache web server” would automatically add /etc/apache/httpd.conf, /usr/sbin/httpd, etc.
• all done via a central database, eg select samba_config from db_machinename;

update

I’ve been doing some more thinking about this. Here’s one proposed database structure and what each column should store:

db_machinename

• file_name (name of the config file we’re backing up)
• config_orig (config file as it was originally)
• date_orig (date the config file was read in)
• config_cur (config file as it is today)

db_machinename_diffs

• file_id (id of the config file we’re dealing with)
• diff_date (date we took the diff)
• diff_text (text of the actual diff)