Symlinking config files

configurationgitsymlink

Our server has various services with it's own config file. Nginx, Dovecot, Postfix…

All these config files are located in their own /etc/{service} directory.

I'm trying to move these files to a central location and add a symlink.
Something like:
/etc/postfix/main.cf <- /root/server-config/postfix/main.cf

The above works for most services (Nginx, PHP, ..). However, some services related to e-mail give permission denied errors. I've tried many different options like giving more permission to both the symlink and the source file, giving max permission (777), run as Root, add dovecot/postfix to root group..

All options I tried didn't make any difference. Our main goal is to have all config files in a git repository and push them to GitHub so we have them in version control.

What can I do to make the above work.

If you have an alternative that don't work with git or symlinks, please add those as a comment instead.

Best Answer

I think your idea to move config files to another locations from their default locations and creating symbolic link to them is not a good one, it can create lots of problems.

  • If the symlinks are broken for some reason, the relevent software or service can stop working and this can make your system and services vulnerable and unusable. You may also find it hard to repair. So you should think of doing it in the other way around.

You can think of using tools such as etckeeper which lets you to automatically store changes made to /etc or (other directories) to version control systems like git. Then you can push those to a central git repo.

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