etckeeper is a tool for using a version control system to store server configuration in git.
etckeeper manages /etc be stored in git, mercurial, bazaar, or darcs repository. By default each of the commands operates on /etc, but a different directory can be specified to operate on a clone of the /etc repository located elseware.
etckeeper also stores permissions and meta data about configurations stored in /etc
Sometimes the repository can become huge, in which case the repository needs to be garbage collected.