Bug#1014431: popularity-contest: automatically create hostid if not specified in popularity-contest.conf
On Sat, Jul 16, 2022 at 10:18:11AM +0200, Ansgar wrote:
> On Thu, 2022-07-14 at 19:59 +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 06:29:55PM +0200, Ansgar wrote:
> > > > From man:machine-id(5):
> > >
> > > +---
> > > > The machine ID is usually generated from a random source during
> > > > system installation or first boot and stays constant for all
> > > > subsequent boots. Optionally, for stateless systems, it is generated
> > > > during runtime during early boot if necessary.
> > > +---
> > >
> > > That looks like it fulfills what I guess popcon needs.
> >
> > Almost. Is it possible to detect stateless system so that they do not report to popcon?
>
> Does popcon detect such systems currently? I don't think anything
> changes for such systems with the proposed change?
Currently, if a system does not have a valid MY_HOSTID, it will not report to
the popcon server. If two systems have identical MY_HOSTID, they are considered as
one and the same by the popcon server, and only the last received report
is kept.
There are two issues we want to avoid:
1/ system images: a master image is generated and used for hundred of
hosts. All system will have the same package list and probably the same
usage pattern. The cost to popcon of receiving hundreds of identical
reports is far higher than the benefit it provides to the dataset, and
it biais the data toward the system images package selection.
2/ randomly changing MY_HOSTID: the time-to-live of a MY_HOSTID is 20
days. That means that if a system get a new random MY_HOSTID once a day,
it will be counted 20 times by the server.
Of course 1/ and 2/ can happen at the same time, if a single system
image is used to generate short living stateless systems, then it can
easily generate a thousand of identical reports.
There is nothing that prevent users to set up systems in a way that
flood popcon, but at least we should not make it the default behavior.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
Reply to: