[plug] Server "diff"

[Tim Bowden]

Brad Hill wrote:

>I want to know an easy way to get a list of all of the file differences
>between two servers...
>
>I was thinking of using rsync or something but am not quite sure of how to
>get it to just LIST differences rather than actually downloading and
>updating all the files...
>
>This is just so i can find all the changes a previous admin has made to a
>default system so i know exactly what deviations from the norm we have in
>place, but obviously i want to extend it to everything down to file
>permissions etc just to make sure the previous admin hasn't also introduced
>security holes i'm so far unaware of.
>
>Any suggestions much appreciated and (hopefully) none will get flamed.
>  
>
Are you sure you need to compare the system in question to a separate 
default install?  If you have an rpm based system  then any files 
installed from an rpm could be verified using 'rpm -V -a' which checks 
by default size, mode (permissions & file type), md5sum, device major & 
minor, user & group & time.  To find any files not installed from an rpm 
compare the differences between 'rpm -q -a -l' and 'find /'.  How to 
check those files would depend on where they came from.

Hope this is of some help to somebody.

Regards,
Tim Bowden