[SGVLUG] managing /etc - cvs everything?

[Claude Felizardo]

I'm working on rebuilding my Linux server at home and have just setup
rsnapshot to do the backups but was wondering if anyone has used CVS
or equiv to track all of the system config files in say /etc?  With
rsnapshot, I can do diffs going back several months (or at least until
I start running out of space and have to delete the older backups) but
there aren't any tools to interactively compare the different
versions.  I've been using lincvs at work which gives me a nifty gui
to check the cvs logs, do side by side diffs, etc.  I'm not good at
keeping a journal for stuff at home since I'm often tweaking things
remotely as soon as I find a problem.

Whenever I have to tweak a config file, I usually make a backup of the
original file by appending .orig and then do manual diffs between that
and the current file.  Does anyone actually put their entire /etc tree
into CVS?  What happens when you apply patches and a whole slew of
files are changed?  I suppose you could tag everything.

Does RPM or any of the other package managers let you do diff against
the original config files?  I know that urpmi will show you diffs with
the new files.

claude