CrossNodes: Tame Your Wild Config Herds With CVS

“Two of the great joys of Linux are plain-text configuration
files and scripting–combined, they are easy to read, edit,
reproduce, deploy and automate. I especially like the ability to
create multiple configurations for a program, such as a mail server
or backup script, and easily call up different configs for
testing.

“Every sysadmin develops their own tips and tricks and
particular ways of doing things. Scripts and configuration files
change and evolve over time. The wise sysadmin keeps backup copies
of everything–you never know when you’re going to want to roll
back to that script you wrote a year ago. One way is to simply keep
copies of everything. CVS (concurrent version system) saves
considerable storage space by recording and tracking only changes,
and it never forgets anything.

“CVS is widely used to manage software development projects. It
keeps a complete history of changes, and who made them. It manages
the concurrent editing of files by multiple authors, and controls
access. It uses a central repository, and also allows users to have
their own personal repositories. It is not a build system, but a
way to track and record changes…”

Complete
Story