Mac® Security Bible

23.3. Radmind

Radmind (Remote Administration Daemon), created by the University of Michigan Research Systems Unix Group (http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/), is a free, open-source system available for most popular computer platforms. Unlike Tripwire, which merely monitors files for changes, Radmind's file integrity monitoring is more of a side effect of its main function, which is to distribute entire system installations to multiple computers, keep them all updated, and enable an administrator to revert them to a predetermined state if necessary. That is, its mission isn't just to report changes but rather to reverse them.

If you decide to download Radmind, start with the Radmind Assistant, available at http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/download.html. Install that first. It includes a copy of the Radmind Tools package itself, but because the included version may be older than what's built in to the Radmind Assistant installer, you should then also download and install the latest Radmind Tools package separately.

Another crucial difference between Tripwire and Radmind is that the latter requires both client and server components. Radmind doesn't simply take a snapshot of the way files look at a particular moment and compare it to another snapshot; instead, it asks you to create a special set of files on the server that will function as a base (you can do this ...