sourcejedi.etckeeper

Install etckeeper. Track the contents of /etc using a version control system.

The current contents of /etc is recorded in a Git repository. Etckeeper creates new commits to the repository at daily intervals, and also when files are created or altered by the package manager (if supported).

Status

This particular role was written to work on an existing system. It has been tested to work regardless of whether

• etckeeper has already been installed
• the etckeeper repository exists or not
• the etckeeper repository happens to exist but without any commits

Ansible --check mode is supported.

If you run check mode when etckeeper is not fully installed, the play will fail. This behaviour is expected, as a complex role where some tasks depend on earlier ones. We take care to produce this behaviour, making sure that check mode doesn't skip certain types of task and then give a misleading report of "changed=0".

Requirements

Used successfully on Fedora, CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu 16.04+. I imagine most Linux distributions will provide an etckeeper package that works fine with this role.

On CentOS, the EPEL repo will be added to provide the etckeeper package.

Some older version of Ubuntu won't work, because their packaging changed the default backend to bzr, instead of git. Etckeeper recommends against this - the backend should be git, unless the user has a strong preference for something else. This role is implemented for git specifically (see below). I might accept minimal pull requests for alternatives.

Dependencies

user.email is set automatically for the git repository. This is required by git, and older versions of etckeeper fail to provide a value for it in some cases. I did not include a role variable to change exactly what value is used. However if user.email is already set (e.g. in /root/.gitconfig), this step is skipped. So if you care what value is used, make sure your /root/.gitconfig is set up in advance. (Or send me an issue / pull request, to explain why you want a role variable).

License

This role is licensed GPLv3, please open an issue if this creates any problem.