Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there?

[User Freebsd]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006, Nikolas Britton wrote:

> The only way this idea will work is if we put some code in the base 
> system that sends something generic every few months. for example. Send 
> 'uname -mr' to stats.freebsd.org every 3 months. It would be very easy 
> to 'opt out', perhaps stats_enable="NO" in rc.conf.
>
> Alternatively we could make it 'opt in' at install time. The installer 
> could add stats_enable="YES" to rc.conf when someone answers yes.
>
> The actual code to implement this is trivial, something like a few lines 
> of shell script and a config file that lists the next send date. This 
> config file can be checked during the monthly periodic and if needed 
> trigger the stats script to send the anonymous data and update the next 
> send date in the config file. If the stats script can't find a path out 
> it should update the next send date and then die.

Btw, you'd need to include something else in the mix to differentiate 
various hosts ... maybe MAC address or something like that?


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Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
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