I’ve released cfgtrack v1.0: Get notified of changes on your server

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015

I needed a simple way of being notified when configuration files had been changed on some servers. Nothing fancy. No configuration management, no intrusion detection, no centralised versioning control repositories. Just a simple email saying what’s been changed. I couldn’t find a tool that did just that, and didn’t require massive amounts of configuration, so I wrote one myself.

I’ve just released version 1.0 of the tool, which is available in source, Debian, Redhat and zip packages.

Here’s how simple it is:

$ sudo cfgtrack track /etc/
Now tracking /etc/

# Make some changes in a file

$ sudo cfgtrack -a -m ferry.boender@example.com compare

And I’ll get an email in my mailbox if anything’s been changed since the last time I ran compare. A diff is included to easily spot what has changed.

Add the above to a daily cronjob and you’ll be kept up-to-date about changes to your configuration files. Now you’ll have a heads-up if automatic package upgrades modify configuration files or a co-administrator decided to make some changes.

More information is available on the Github project page.