NAME¶
metche - reducing root bus factor
SYNOPSIS¶
-
metche [-h VSERVER] report (stable|testing|unstable)-YYYYMMDDHHMM
metche [-h VSERVER] list
metche [-h VSERVER] stabilize testing-YYYYMMDDHHMM
DESCRIPTION¶
metche is a tool meant to ease collective system administration by monitoring
changes in the system configuration.
metche basic usage is to monitor changes in a directory, usually /etc;
optionally, metche can also monitor:
- •
- one or more user maintained changelog files,
- •
- the state of Debian packages and versions.
metche should be installed with a cronjob that regularly runs to automatically
save the system state as needed. These states are saved in a way similar to
the Debian development model:
- •
- unstable states are saved as soon as a change is
detected. They are kept until a new testing state appears.
- •
- testing states is created from the last
unstable state that has not been changed after a short amount of
time (by default, one hour). Old unstable states are deleted
afterwards.
- •
- stable states are created from the last
testing state, either manually, or after a long amount of time (by
default, 3 days). Old testing states are deleted afterwards.
When a new
testing state is saved, an email is sent to a configurable
address, giving an overwiew of the differences with the previous
testing. A notification is also sent when a new
stable state is
saved.
metche's configuration is read from /etc/metche.conf. Various settings like
changelog monitoring or time between system state switches are described
there.
OPTIONS¶
If -h VSERVER is specified, the VServer
VSERVER is operated on
instead of the host system. This, along with the VSNAMES option, allows one to
monitor several VServers running on the system.
One of the following commands must be specified on the command line:
- report
- When run with the report command, metche displays a
report against the specified saved state, or if unspecified, against the
latest testing state. This is useful when you have broken your system and
want to know which changes have been made since a given, known working,
system state.
- list
- When run with the list command, metche displays a
list of all the saved states.
- stabilize
- When run with the stabilize command, metche turns a
"testing state" into a "stable state". By default, it
will use the last "testing state", but this can be overridden by
giving a specific state as argument.
- cron
- This command should not be called manually, but used from a
cronjob. When called, it can perform various operations like: saving
"unstable", "testing" or "stable" states as
needed and sending reports and notification if configured to do so. This
command does not support the -h option.
FILES¶
/etc/metche.conf contains metche configuration.
When configured to monitor one changelog, CHANGELOG_FILE (default:
/root/Changelog).
When configured to monitor multiple changelogs, CHANGELOG_DIR/*/Changelog
(default: /root/changelogs).
System states are saved in BACKUP_DIR (default: /var/lib/metche).
SECURITY¶
metche is able to use GnuPG to encrypt the email it sends, but does not by
default; just enable the ENCRYPT_EMAIL configuration option, and make sure
EMAIL_ADDRESS' public key is in root's keyring, trusted enough to be used
blindly by metche. If EMAIL_ADDRESS is an email alias or mailing-list's
address, you probably want to use the group option in /root/.gnupg/gpg.conf so
that metche reports are encrypted for every person subscribed to this alias or
mailing-list; for more information, see
gpg(1).
When DO_DETAILS is enabled and ENCRYPT_EMAIL is disabled, metche sends in
clear text email the changes made to the watched directory... either
make sure that the EXCLUDES configuration variable prevents it to send
sensitive information, or triple check that secure connections will be used
end-to-end on the email path. If unsure, set EMAIL_ADDRESS configuration
variable to a local mailbox. Please note that EMAIL_ADDRESS is not used for
VServers: a VServer's report messages are sent to its root email address.
metche stores, in BACKUP_DIR (default: /var/lib/metche), various backups of
WATCHED_DIR. Make sure that this backup place is at least as secured as the
source.
BUGS¶
See metche's ticket system (
https://labs.riseup.net/code/projects/metche/issues)
for known bugs, missing features, and the development road-map.
AUTHORS¶
metche and this manual page were written by the boum.org collective, and are now
maintained by the metche developers collective
<metche@lists.riseup.net>.
