BSDStats - What is involved ... ?

Brooks Davis brooks at one-eyed-alien.net
Mon Aug 28 13:03:02 UTC 2006


On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 05:08:57PM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Max Laier wrote:
> 
> >fetch(3) makes use of a couple of environment vars to set proxy and 
> >authentification - this should be reuseable.  I haven't looked at 
> >BSDStats yet, but if you use fetch - just make sure you have the ENV and 
> >things work.
> 
> Anyone with an Authenticated Proxy able to code up a patch for this?
> 
> >I guess the easiest way, would be an email to root@ which can be 
> >forwarded to you.  This way you can enable it by default and the 
> >operator can still decide if they want to take part in the process.
> 
> Actually, email would provide no ability to do the 'request-challenge' 
> that we have currently implemented in an effort to *reduce* (although I 
> know it won't eliminate) ppl "spamming" the system ... the authenticated 
> proxy issue, IMHO, doesn't negate the r-c system, since we aren't basing 
> anything, *except* country, on the IP itself ...
> 
> So, although using http won't allow *all* hosts to participate, our hope 
> is that it will provide enough numbers with suitable checks-n-balances as 
> to make the #s viable, and realistic ...

While I understand (or think I understand) the motivations for this
design goal, it's contrary to allowing collection of statistics from
many people.  I'd love to be able to publish data from the FreeBSD
systems (300+) at work, but unless I can do it in an anonymized aggregate
form it's not going to happen.  I just can't justify leaking that much
internal configuration information given a policy of hiding it (right or
wrong and not subject to debate).  If I could run my own stats server
and publish from it that might be possible.

-- Brooks
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