Is it an unsafe practice to symlink /etc conf files

configurationconfiguration-managementgitsymbolic-linksymlink

To manage the configuration of a server, I keep some configuration flies (located in /etc) under version control (in the home folder) and then symlink to them from their /etc locations:

/etc/someprog/c.conf -> /home/ubuntu/etc-config/someprog/c.conf

Is this a reasonable approach? Any potential downsides?

Best Answer

I noticed you add git as a tag--it sounds like /home/ubuntu/etc-config is a git repository with all your configs in it. In which case, it sounds like you're trying to manage configuration files from a central location. If that's the case, I highly recommend looking for a real solution.

Take a look at something like puppet, chef, cfengine, or any of the major configuration manage engines out there. Many of them are free and open source, widely used, and are typically very easy to setup and manage. If you're trying to use a "lightweight" method instead, you'll likely come to regret it later.

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Linux – Why won’t apache load a symlinked file from conf.d

Is SELinux enabled on this server? I wonder if this is stopping apache from loading this symlink correctly?

Linux – How to symlink folders and exclude certain files

I assume you really mean "symlink everything inside the folder"...

Conceptually, you want something like:

for each file in base folder not in exclude list
    create symlink in target folder pointing back to base folder
done

bash logic to achieve this goes something like

#! /bin/bash

exclude=( "foo.conf" "bar.conf" )

for file in *; do
    for (( index = 0; index < ${#exclude[@]}; index++ )); do
        if [[ ${file} != ${exclude[${index}]} ]]; then
            ln -s ${file} ${target}/${file}
        fi  
    done
done

Assuming you don't know already, the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide should give you enough to work out what globbing you want (perhaps find) and how to convert that to a function (perhaps a recursive one).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – Why won’t apache load a symlinked file from conf.d

Linux – How to symlink folders and exclude certain files

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