Sysadmins - versioning config files

Hello,

I'm new to subversion and I'm looking at it as a way to help me backup and
work with config files on a number of Unix/linux servers. Essentially, I
want to be able to import /etc/ and everything below it and have Subversion
maintain control of that. That way, I can create a new tree for each server
and if my /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file changes and I need to get a working
version of it, I can always go back to that.

The problem I am running into is that there are some pipes or FIFOs that
exist in the /etc/ structure (created by mkfifo). It seems that Subversion
not only doesn't support them, but it won't skip them either. I don't care
too much if they don't get checked in (I would like to get a complete
snapshot if possible though), but I don't know how to make subversion skip
them without erroring out:

root@ansdbfo1 /etc> svnadmin create /svn

root_at_ansdbfo1 /etc> svn import -m "Initial import" file:///svn/ansdbfo1-etc

Adding release

Adding mvdir

Adding llthosts.init40

Adding cron.d

Adding cron.d/cron.deny

Adding cron.d/.proto

Adding cron.d/at.deny

svn: Can't detect MIME type of non-file 'cron.d/FIFO'

Can anyone help me out here? I'd like to be able to import my entire /etc
directory without worrying about FIFOs that are there. Even better yet
would be to add subversion support for ALL files.

It's great that you guys support symlinks. That was the major limitation in
keeping me from doing this before (didn't want to lose all of the /etc/rcX.d
startup scripts, which are really just symlinks). I wish you would support
other special types of files as well, like device nodes and fifos.

Thanks in advance,

Luke Youngblood
Senior System Administrator
PhoneCharge, Inc.
(203) 732-7639 x279
 <http://www.phonechargeinc.com> http://www.phonechargeinc.com

 
Received on Mon Apr 25 21:11:40 2005