backing up /etc using svn

[dninja at gmail.com (Robin Wood)]

2009/8/10 Dmitry Nedospasov <russo091 at gmail.com>:
> Robin,
>
> Have you considered using an svn locally for versioning and then rsyncing
> that remoteley?
>
> This way you could create a repository readable by both root and the
> "trusted" user. The trusted user could then rsync everything off to the
> remote server.
>
> One issue that comes to my mind is, what will happen with permissions? I
> reckon the file permissions will stay the same, however the owner might
> change when restoring. (Or am i wrong?)

I hadn't considered that, remotely backup the repo rather than the
files. If I did that then I could encrypt the repo before sending it
and so any user back it up. I already back up a number of other files
that are lumps of other areas so adding one extra won't be any
trouble.

I know that svn keeps file permissions and think it keeps uid/guid
info so restoring a file to the same machine should leave it back with
the same ids as it left, especially if the passwd and group file are
included in the restore. I'll have to give this a good test before
relying on it but I think it should work ok.

Robin