[$Id: install.txt 57004 2008-08-05 14:52:33Z hpk $]
vadm is a simple svn-like command line tool for versioning unix system files including tracking of POSIX ownership and permission information. vadm is released under the terms of the GPL Version 3 and was written by Holger Krekel with initial contributions from Jens-Uwe Mager.
vadm depends on the py lib which provides programmatic access to subversion by using the 'svn' command line tool. The vadm scripts also will make use of the sudo command which usually is available on Unix and OSX systems.
download the py lib tarball and install it like this:
tar zxvf py-0.9.1.tar.gz cd py-0.9.1 python setup.py install
download the vadm tarball and install it like this:
tar zxvf vadm-0.6.0.tar.gz cd vadm-0.6.0 python setup.py install
If you want to follow the development version you ca type something like this:
svn co https://codespeak.net/svn/vadm/dist/vadm
and add the vadm/bin/ directory to your $PATH variable. The vadm script will automatically use the development version.
You first need to create a repository for storing information about your system files:
vadm create /path/to/my/sysrepo
Afterwards you can checkout from the newly created repository:
vadm checkout file:///path/to/my/sysrepo
Multiple users can checkout from the same repository. EAch of the users will have a "working copy" in its .vadm/hostwc directory.
Note that the vadm script mandates execution as a non-root user that has the right to execute sudo.
For adding, committing, reverting or inquiring of files and directories you may now use svn-like commands, including their abbreviations. For example:
vadm add /etc/passwd # add this file to version-control vadm commit -m "passwords" /etc vadm log /etc/passwd # show list of commits to this file vadm status / # show status of versioned files vadm st # show status of current dir vadm help # lists all available commands
Because vadm uses subversion under the hood you can install commit notification and other hooks in your repository. With vadm config you can get information about your local working copy and the repository url.
Here are some background notes and hints:
if you want to auto-commit nightly you may create a crontab entry like this:
59 23 * * * /usr/bin/vadm ci -m "autocommit" / >/dev/null
vadm works by mapping all versioned files into a per-user working copy. Permissions and ownership information are kept in vadm:posix svn properties. The Working copy is usually kept under $USER/.vadm/hostwc. You may cd there and use svn for introspection directly.
When you issue vadm add dir/somefile vadm creates and adds a directory dir to the WC, copies the somefile to the WC and schedules it for addition.
For almost any command, vadm will internally first update the working copy files from the corresponding filesystem information. This imposes a startup overhead which is usually not noticeable on modern systems if you only deal with text configuration files.
You can always remove the Working Copy in $USER/.vadm and/or directly perform vadm checkout URL which will always remove the working copy before re-creating it. vadm can re-create all its information from the repository and the life filesystem. However, any information that only exists in the working copy (like files scheduled for addition or removal) will be lost.