a CVS front-end for

Multiple Hosts configuration files management

 
What is ccvs ?
Ccvs is a text-front-end to cvs  aimed to managed multiple hosts configuration files (or any other host's files if you want).

If you have ever managed multiple *nix hosts, and at the worse, in a group of admins (sometimes with rough or vague  competences), you know what nightmare it can quickly become.

for instance:

Someone modified x configuration files of the y service and it doesn't work anymore.... (and you hope he just broke the y service)
  • You can't know whom of them did that to revert the situation (and sometimes he won't tell you that he broke everything)
  • You can't know what this 'admin' did
  • You can't know which hosts of your 256 linux-boxed cluster he modified
  • You can't revert the changes without checking every configuration files known to be involved
ccvs can check / compare/ recover (and of course update) all changes applied to any files of any hosts, seeing that these hosts / files have been added to the ccvs repository.

By the way, you can use all the cvs features to access an older set of these files or to make some diff between two versions.

For the moment, I decided that ccvs would be a shell script and it perhaps will be ported to C or C++.

 
What ccvs is not ?
ccvs is not a security tool:
I think security is elsewhere, if someone has been able to modify your configuration files he probably would have modified you cvs repository too.
(according to Murphy's law)
ccvs is not a developpement tool:
but if you really want it probably can be.

 
What is requiered ? 
First of all, you should have CVS installed and configured properly (details here).
You have to create a repository named ccvs which will be read-write accessable by a group of users, those who will be granted to add/modify  the hosts/files to be managed by ccvs.
Sometimes, you will need a root access to recover some files.
I use Linux, I won't do anything for those who still persits in losing their time under any expensive,  unreliable or broken systems, but I'm wide opened to any suggestion about some new features.

 
Why isn't ccvs a part of the GNU project ?
Well, I'm not against that, but isn't ccvs too small to join  the GNU ?
(to be honest, I did a mistake in the request form :\ )

 
Who am I ?
I'm a french *nix admin and sometimes a developper. You can check my home page there containing some of my musical / gfx artworks (poor band width)
email: [email protected]
I'm not a number and bcott is for 'boycott'. I hate many things. grrr :)

sorry for the deadlinks everything soon available (probably before  july 2001)


 



 
 
 
 
 
Available documentation README
INSTALL
one gzipped file in HTML format
one gzipped file in LaTeX format
one gzipped file in LyX format
one gzipped file in dvi format
Download sources .tar.gz
anon CVS checkout cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/ccvs login
When prompted for a password, just press the Enter key
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/ccvs co modulename
Don't type any module name to get a global checkout

 
All materials available here are (c) 2001 Franck B. and released under the GNU General Public License v2 or later
Thanks goes to the Free Software Fundation for hosting this project  and for the GNU