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Popularity-contest Frequently Asked Questions.
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Q) What information is reported by popularity-contest ?
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A) popularity-contest reports the system architecture you use, the version of
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popularity-contest you use and the list of packages installed on your
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system. For each package, popularity-contest looks at the most recently used
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(based on atime) files, and reports the filename, its last access time
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(atime) and last change time (ctime). However, some files are not
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considered, because they have unreliable atime.
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Q) What is considered a 'vote' for a package ?
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A) A computer 'vote' for a package if according to the data provided in the
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report, a program provided or depending on the package was used less than
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thirty days ago. This computation is performed by the popcon server.
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Q) What are the privacy considerations for popularity-contest ?
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A) Each popularity-contest host is identified by a random 128bit uuid
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(MY_HOSTID in /etc/popularity-contest.conf). This uuid is used to
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track submissions issued by the same host. It should be kept secret.
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The reports are sent by email or HTTP to the popcon server. The
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server automatically extracts the report from the email or HTTP and
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stores it in a database for a maximum of 20 days or until the host
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sends a new report. This database is readable only by Debian
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Developers. The emails are readable only by the server admins.
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Every day, the server computes a summary and post it on
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<http://popcon.debian.org/all-popcon-results.txt.gz>. This summary
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is a merge of all the submissions and does not include uuids.
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Known weaknesses of the system:
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1) Your submission might be eavesdropped. We evaluate the possibility
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to use public-key cryptography to protect the submission while in
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transit.
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2) Someone who knows that you are very likely to use a particular package
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reported by only one person (e.g. you are the maintainer) might infer you
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are not at home when the package is not reported anymore. However this is
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only a problem if you are gone for more than two weeks if the computer is
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shut-down and 23 days if it is let idle.
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3) Unofficial and local packages are reported. This can be an issue
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due to 2) above, especially for custom-build kernel packages.
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We are evaluating how far we can alleviate this problem.
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Q) /usr is mounted with 'noatime'.
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A) popularity-contest relies on atime to know what packages were used during
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the last month. This means you will only report the list of packages
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installed without usage information.
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Q) When does popularity-contest run ?
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A) popularity-contest is run by the daily cron job
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"/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest", but only one day in the week,
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which is specified in the configuration file. This day is chosen randomly
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to spread the load on the server.
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Under the default configuration of cron, this happens at 6:47 in the morning.
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This can be changed by editing /etc/crontab but if your computer is not always
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turned on, we really recommend you install the anacron package.
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If /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest has not run for more than a week, it will
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accept to run any day.
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Q) I don't want popcon email to be sent by root! How can I change that ?
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A) To send as user 'myuser', edit the function 'do_sendmail' in
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/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest to
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do_sendmail()
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{
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su myuser -s /bin/sh -c "/usr/sbin/sendmail -oi \"$MAILTO\""
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}
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Q) How can I pass extra options to sendmail ?
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A) Add a line in /etc/popularity-contest.conf as follow
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MTAOPS="-opt1 -opt2 -opt3"
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Q) How can I prevent popularity-contest from sending reports via email?
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A) This is not recommended. Reports are sent by email only when the HTTP
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submission fails, which is generally caused by a temporary lack of internet
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connectivity. By contrast, reports sent by email are stored in the mail server
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queue until the internet connectivity is back.
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Nevertheless, you can prevent popularity-contest from sending reports via email
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by adding
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MAILTO=
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to /etc/popularity-contest.conf
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Q) How can I specify a HTTP proxy server for the HTTP submission ?
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Popularity-contest honors the environment variable http_proxy that you can
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set in /etc/environment. Alternatively you can specify a proxy server
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specifically for popularity-contest by adding a line
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HTTP_PROXY="http://<proxy hostname>:<port>"
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to /etc/popularity-contest.conf.
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Q) How can I convert the timestamps in the popcon report to human-readable
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dates ?
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A) The timestamps are just the number of seconds since the epoch, namely
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1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. You can convert e.g. 1139229934 to a human-readable
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date with
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date -d '1970-01-01 UTC 1139229934 seconds'
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or on Etch and later systems, the following is shorter:
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date -d '@1139229934'
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