Measuring success/failure in the installation

[Kees Cook]

Hi,

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 08:26:32PM +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Evan Dandrea [2011-06-15 12:17 +0100]:
> > Instead of operating entirely in the background without user
> > intervention, I am proposing that the installer include a checkbox
> > with the label, "Send information about setup to help improve the
> > experience."  It will be present on the last page of the installer as
> > well as the quit and crash dialogs.
> 
> I feel a lot better about this than the previous proposal, for two
> reasons:
> 
>  * We allow the paranoid folks to opt out, and have something to point
>    to if someone complains.
> 
>  * It seems to be much better compatible with current legal matters.
>    (But deferring to legal team for the definitive decision here)
> 
>  * It collects useful data, so instead of just knowing "we got worse",
>    we can actually tell why (traces/logs) and where (it might affect
>    particular platforms/graphics cards/etc.)

I agree as well. This seems like much more obvious benefit to the end-user
(even if it remains a rather delayed benefit).

> My preference is to ensure that it doesn't have personal data, just
> data about the installer environment and the hardware (we need to
> ensure that it doesn't have serial numbers, etc.).

Yeah, and I'll second this too. dmidecode and lshw especially contain
a lot of serial numbers (disks, bios, cpu, etc).

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
Ubuntu Security Team