changetrack - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

changetrack - track changes to files

SYNOPSIS

changetrack [-h] [-c configfile] [-d directory] [-e] [-r] [-q] [-m message] [-M message]
[-v] [-u] [-o toaddress] [-f fromaddress]

DESCRIPTION

changetrack is a program to monitor changes to a bunch of files. If files are modified one
day, and the machine starts working incorrectly some days later, changetrack can provide
information on which files were modified, and help locate the problem.

Normally changetrack uses ed to keep track of various revisions of the files by
maintaining an .ed script with the change history for each file.

Alternatively, changetrack can use rcs to keep track of various revisions of the files.
Each file is "installed" in the rcs system the first time that changetrack is run after
that file is added to the config file. Whenever changetrack is run after that, a copy of
the file is made, which is 'checked in' and implicitly 'checked out' of the rcs system.
See the man page of co for information on retrieving an old version of the file.

Backup files (ending in tilde ~) are ignored, unless explicitly included.

After each pattern in the file list, adding white space, a colon (:) then more whitespace,
followed by email addresses, separated by more whitespace, will result in the changes to
that file being emailed to that address. All changes from each run are expressed in one
email. Using the email feature requires Mail::SendMail to be installed; if it does not
work correctly, an error message will be printed to standard error.

OPTIONS

-h Display a short help message then exit.

-cconfigfile
Get the list of files to track from configfile instead of from ~/.changetrackrc
(/etc/changetrack.conf for the super-user)

-doutputdirectory
Store output in outputdirectory instead of in ~/.changetrack/
(/var/lib/changetrack/ for the super-user)

-e Keep a copy of the file from when it was first added to the changetrack
configuration, and keep ed styled changes to rebuild the file. This option is
recommended only if rcs does not work on the machine. To recover using this means,
the .ed file should have the last several commands removed, to allow the file to be
rebuilt to the appropriate state. A command like 'cat myfile.ed | ed
myfile.original' should be executed.

-r Disable the rcs facility.

-q Quiet mode; only print critical messages. Good for scripts.

-mmessage
Print message on each file, after checking for any changes. Good for indicating
reboots or other system events.

-Mmessage
Like -m, but message is only printed on modified files.

-v Print version and exit.

-u Use unified diffs (this only works with some implementations of diff.

-oemailaddress
Mail output to emailaddress. This is supplementary to emails specified in the
config file.

-femailaddress
Set "From" header to emailaddress, which must be fully qualified.

REQUIREMENTS

This program requires diff. Unless the -r switch is used, this program requires rcs to be
installed. If the -e switch is used, ed is required.

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