I'm renting a slice (i.e., a VPS) from Slicehost. I've a spent a day or two filling up /usr with my favorite packages, /etc with configs and init scripts, and so on. Now I want to:

1. save this whole setup somewhere (e.g., to load onto another machine).
2. see what changes I've made to which files
3. revert changes, tag revisions, and all that other good version control stuff

Saving a disk image gives me (1), but not (2) and (3).

Using Subversion (svn import / svn://someotherhost) might give me all three, but I expect problems if I actually try to check a project out into / and maintain .svn directories in root-owned areas. And to load my setup onto a fresh slice, I'd need to install an svn client on it first.

Is there a good way to do what I want to do?