How to check for modified config files on a Debian system?

Question

How to find all Debian managed configuration files which have been changed from the default?

Answer 1

To find all Debian managed configuration files which have been changed from the default you can use a command like this.

dpkg-query -W -f='${Conffiles}\n' '*' | awk 'OFS="  "{print $2,$1}' | md5sum -c 2>/dev/null | awk -F': ' '$2 !~ /OK/{print $1}'

Answer 2

I generally like to setup etckeeper on the system pretty much immediately. With something like etckeeper I can find not only when the file is different, but I can actually get a diff of exactly how it is different.

See:

• Using revision control for server configuration files?
• What tool do you recommend to track changes on a Linux/Unix server.