BSDStats - What is involved ... ?

[Marc G. Fournier]

On Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Robert Watson wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Aug 2006, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
>> In getting this into the base system itself?  Opt-in, default turned off, 
>> of course, but maybe as an option in sysinstall to be enabled easily?
>
> A summary of what exactly it does and how, as well as its technical 
> requirements and dependencies, would be a useful starting point for this 
> discussion.

Apologies, with all the discussiosn on -questions, I figured everyone know 
by now ...

In response to my frustration with the iir(4) driver support in 6.x 
compared to 4.x, I decided to redirect my energies into "creative 
channels" ... in this case, based on some prelim discussions in 
-questions, I developed /usr/ports/sysutils/bsdstats ... its primary 
purpose is to, over time, get some reasonable numbers on deployment(s) of 
*BSD, in my case, more specifically, FreeBSD ...

Enabled, the basic script just sends release and architecture, with IP of 
sending server being used to determine country codes ... neither IP nor 
hostname are saved in the database, at the request of various 'security 
conscious administrators' (ie. v3.x in ports right now) ... instead, we've 
setup a very simple 'request - authenticate' system to generate a unique 
'sysid' that is used for subsequent communications with the server ...

There is a second part to the script, that is disabled by default, that 
actually sends over hardware information, and cpu, based on pciconf -l and 
sysctl hw, to get numbers of vendors, hardware and drivers that are 
actually in use ...

The original version that went out had >1500 hosts reporting very quickly, 
but due to db changes required to improve the anonymity of hosts, the db 
format changed, so we are currently at 794 hosts reporting (up 70 hosts 
from last night when I checked) ... http://www.bsdstats.org ...

This is, by no means, something that I consider a 'short term project', 
any more then I considered PostgreSQL one, but it needed to start 
somewhere, and the hope is that if we can get enough hosts reporting in, 
we can show vendors that FreeBSD (and BSDs in general) isn't just some 
'hobbiest system' and warrants their support ...

My goal is to give ppl like Scott Long realistic / hard numbers to show 
ppl like Adaptec in his discussions with them ... or ppl like those on 
-advocacy that are trying to push Adobe for 'native Flash' ...

Everything is designed to be *purely* opt-in (default to off) ... but 
somehow getting something in place so that its there when the system is 
installed / upgraded would reduce one more step involved in getting hosts 
using it, especially if periodic monthly is reporting that its disabled, 
letting them know its there ...