For the purposes mentioned and similar, I've often thought it would be good to have an editor (or editor mode) where the changes are logged somewhere.
? /etc/edits.log
I've heard of people who use CVS for this sort of thing. All changes are commited to CVS so if there is a problem with anything on the server, you can see what has changed recently. This is a great idea when there are several people who all maintain the same machine (or network).
Actually, CVS might be overkill. On one shared server, we use RCS to manage locking and rollback on config files. Locking is actually more important than rollback.
Each valuable file includes a big comment block at the beginning saying something like :-
"STOP! This file is under RCS control. Before editing, use 'co -l <file>'. After editing, use 'ci -u <file>'"
The checkin makes the file read-only, so you get another indication that things aren't ready.
Also, running 'rcsdiff <file>' tells you if there is currently a checked-out version, and what the differences are ...
-jim
