pacmods

Arch Linux tool to show changes to the system configuration files.

Example run:

# ./pacmods.py
M /etc/fstab (filesystem)
M /etc/passwd (filesystem)
M /etc/systemd/logind.conf (systemd)
D /etc/foo.conf (foo)
A /etc/systemd/system/default.target
A /etc/profile.d/vim.sh

• Modified config files are indicated with M; the package that the file belongs to is appended in parentheses.
• Deleted config files are indicated with D; the owning package is appended in parentheses.
• Added config files are shown with A.

How it works

• "M"odified and "D"eleted config files are detected by looking at the config files (or "backup files") of each installed package (these are treated specially by pacman). Modifications are detected by comparing the MD5 checksum of the file against the package database.
• "A"dded files are all files in /etc and /usr/local/etc that are not owned by a package. Files in /etc/ssl/certs and /etc/ca-certificates/extracted are also excluded, as those directories appear to only contain generated files.

Installation

• Either get it from the AUR (what's the AUR?).
• Or just download pacmods.py from here and run it. Note that you must have the python and pyalpm packages installed.

TODO

• Make the list of config directories (currently /etc and /usr/local/etc) configurable.
• Make the list of excluded files (currently everything in /etc/ssl/certs and /etc/ca-certificates/extracted) configurable; and possibly tweak the defaults, if required.
• Make the output format configurable.