<div dir="ltr">I'd suggest doing so but away from system folders. You can create
symlinks to each file or folder you are interested in backing up (keep
the symlink creation script handy!), and by doing so you won't end up
with the whole filesystem in a git repository.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 12:57 PM, Eli Billauer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:eli@billauer.co.il" target="_blank">eli@billauer.co.il</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi all,<br>
<br>
I'd just like to get your input before I do something stupid. The idea, anyhow, is to create a git repository on my system's root directory, and add many of the system's configuration files (e.g. some of /etc/) for tracking.<br>
<br>
This sounds a bit bizarre even to me, but my question is: Do you see anything bad that could happen?<br>
<br>
I can see a few advantages:<br>
<br>
1. Keep track of my changes in the configuration files over time<br>
<br>
2. Easily spot what has changed, if something breaks for no apparent reason (after some well-meaning automatic utility "helps me out")<br>
<br>
3. Possible to run a cronjob on "git commit -a", maintaining a history of these files (and makes it easy to fall back to a known set)<br>
<br>
4. More freedom to hack these files to solve a problem, knowing that the "working set" it there to fall back to.<br>
<br>
5. Migrating to a new computer by cloning the repository and selectively patching the new system.<br>
<br>
And some disadvantages:<br>
<br>
1. Opening a security loophole somehow (?)<br>
<br>
2. Possibly exposing files containing secrets (otherwise readable by root only, e.g. /etc/ppp/pap-secrets and other password files)<br>
<br>
3. Running git as root<br>
<br>
4. Mess up the system somehow because git wasn't meant to handle sensitive files (?)<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
So what do you say? A bad idea? A brilliant idea? Everyone's doing it and nobody told me?<br>
<br>
TAI,<br>
<br>
Eli<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
-- <br>
Web: <a href="http://www.billauer.co.il" target="_blank">http://www.billauer.co.il</a><br>
<br>
<br>
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</font></span></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Tomer Cohen<br><a href="http://tomercohen.com" target="_blank">http://tomercohen.com</a><br>
</div>