Tracking or auditing Linux configuration changes

As a paranoid user, we sometimes want to know what configuration changed since we install something or upgrading using apt-get upgrade or pacman -Syu. We can use git to track changes in our filesystem, for example:

cd /
sudo git init .

create .gitignore file containing, for example:

/bin
/boot
/dev
/lib
/lib64
/media
/proc
/root
/run
/sbin
/sys
/tmp
/usr
/opt
/var
/etc/ld.so.cache
/home/whoami/.cache/home/whoami/.xsession-errors
/home/whoami/.viminfo
/home/whoami/.bash_history
/home/whoami/.wine
/home/whoami/.config/pulse
/home/whoami/.gstreamer-0.10
/home/whoami/.local/share/recently-used.xbel
/home/whoami/.local/share/gvfs-metadata

and then just add it to our repository:

git add .
git commit -m 'initial filesystem'

After that, just run the package manager's upgrade system command. When there are changes, we could see which files/folders that changed, by typing:

git status




And see the changes for one file:

git diff /path/to/file



This trick also can be used to track history or backup your system's configuration, just use private repository on bitbucket.