[TriLUG] Keeping track of system changes

[Tom Bryan]

On Wednesday 08 September 2004 03:29 pm, Rick DeNatale wrote:
> I've been playing with my personal linux system for about a year now,
> tinkering, tinkering, always tinkering.
>
> I've tried to keep notes on what I've done, not always successfully.
>
> The thread about CVS has me thinking about what techniques and tools
> others might be using to semi-automatically keep track of changes.
>
> Using CVS to keep version trees of config files seems a little
> heavyweight to me, is anyone doing anything like this or are there
> other, better tools for that?

I do this simply because I never forget to backup and archive my personal CVS 
tree.  When I thought, "Ah, everything important is under /home/," and chose 
to "install" instead of "upgrade" Red Hat, I lost /etc/.  A few times.  Now I 
keep a copy of the important config files in CVS.  That CVS book I keep 
mentioning talks about tracking such changes with CVS on a larger scale.

> Most of my notes are kept in an Open Office word document. 

Other than my copy of files in CVS, I also keep a plain text document for 
system changes. I put information about changes I'm making, software I'm 
installing, etc.  It helps me remember little details like the exact 
arguments that I normally use for commands that I don't use often and the 
specific error messages that I got and how I solve them (for later 
searching).  

And a real paper notebook.  I like to keep hardcopies of things like my 
partition table just in case I really screw something up and can't get to any 
of my files.  

---Tom