TC user profile reporting tool

[bmarkus]

As an extension creator I miss information how often they are used, which one is the most popular and which is not used at all. We do not have repo download stats unfortunately and while download stat doesn't give exact number, for sure would provide some useful picture specially when you have no any idea as it is now.

Also, would be good to know the configuration of PC's, localization languages, TC version, Xservers, desktops used and installed extensions.

Let's use a reporting tool which collects such information and sends report to a central site online. This tool may send report automatically when installed, when system started or manually up to the user. Of course report is anonym, do not contain any personal information (well, report delivery mechanism may uncover client IP) and its usage is optional.

For demonstration I wrote a simple program to make such report, see attached file. Client machine is identified with UUID so multiple reports can be assigned to client. It contains info on hardware (CPU, RAM), TC version and configuration, extensions, etc. Of course it can be extended with more info.

http://www.hasix.org/tc/tcprof.txt

[vinnie]

Great idea bmarkus, I think you could add list of ondemand and onboot software in this report.

[solorin]

b(o.o)d

is there any way you would make it so that it would only gather the information manually and we have the option to post it manually?

I for one would rather not have my UUID linked to an I.P.

If not & the language is ash, I wouldn't mind hacking on it.

[coreplayer2]

jeez big brother is here...


sorry couldn't resist..

[bmarkus]

b(o.o)d

is there any way you would make it so that it would only gather the information manually and we have the option to post it manually?

I for one would rather not have my UUID linked to an I.P.

If not & the language is ash, I wouldn't mind hacking on it.

For sure it is possible to have the report tex file in plain and you can choose how to submit. Also, it is possible to configure that certain information is not part of the report. Client side is not an issue. Main question is the central site infrastrtructure and whether collected information would be used by anyone or not. Well, statistics can be made available on a WEB for public use anyhow.

[vinnie]

For sure it is possible to have the report tex file in plain and you can choose how to submit. Also, it is possible to configure that certain information is not part of the report.

You could create a checklist with the marked information that are displayed instantly on the other side?

[bmarkus]

Well, verything is possible. Please consider, that I just opened a topic and created a demo report creator in Python, no any central site or database exists yet. At the moment I'm collecting feedback.

[solorin]

There's no question in my mind, it's useful.
At the very least, even if it was just put up on the wiki,
it would let extension maintainers prioritize extensions by # of users.

If you went with a database, there could be a field in the per package view marked active, inactive or orphan. If a package is orphaned and has 0 users, it could be dropped when migrating to the 5.x repo.

There are many ways these statistics would be of use to community.
Kudos, Markus.

I will gladly contribute to info gathering so long as it respected everyone's privacy.

[Rich]

Hi bmarkus
Since there seems to be some concern about using a disks UUID, would an MD5 hash of the UUID be enough
to obscure it while still providing a unique identifier?

[bmarkus]

Hi bmarkus
Since there seems to be some concern about using a disks UUID, would an MD5 hash of the UUID be enough
to obscure it while still providing a unique identifier?

UUID has nothing to do with disks, it is a standard UUID v1 derived from the machine ID based on MAC address. It can be replaced with UUID v3 which adds MD5 or use UUID v5 wih SHA-1, etc. any time. What is sure that a one-way algorithm can be used, it is not a problem.

[Rich]

Hi bmarkus
My mistake. Thanks for the clarification.

[bmarkus]

Hi bmarkus
My mistake. Thanks for the clarification.

No problem

A good reading on UUID:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uuid