More diagnostics data from desktop

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 4:16 AM, Ernst Sjöstrand <ernstp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> "Send diagnostics information to help improve Ubuntu" sounds like
> you're continuously reporting things, but your proposal looks more
> like a single "installation ping" or something.
> I guess the apport and popcon reports would be continuous though?

The list that Will shared would be a one-time shot, after install,
asynchronously after networking is up on first boot (unless
opted-out).

Popcon would report periodically, and Apport would report crashes
(again, unless opted out).

> If you do this you should really make sure everything has http proxy
> (set in user session only?) support, so you can pick up some extra
> corporate users.

For sure!  Good catch.

> Sending it from the user session fits well with the privacy settings.
>
> Sounds reasonable otherwise. Are trackpads enought trouble to collect data on?

Potentially.  That's the exact sort thing that we need data on, to
help make Ubuntu better :-)

Cheers,
Dustin

> Regards
> //Ernst
>
> 2018-02-14 16:22 GMT+01:00 Will Cooke <will.cooke at canonical.com>:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> We want to be able to focus our engineering efforts on the things that
>> matter most to our users, and in order to do that we need to get some more
>> data about sort of setups our users have and which software they are running
>> on it.
>>
>> We would like to add a checkbox to the installer, exact wording TBD, but
>> along the lines of “Send diagnostics information to help improve Ubuntu”.
>> This would be checked by default.
>>
>> The result of having that box checked would be:
>>
>> * Information from the installation would be sent over HTTPS to a service
>> run by Canonical’s IS team.  This would be saved to disk and sent on first
>> boot once there is a network connection.  The file containing this data
>> would be available for the user to inspect.
>>
>> That data would include:
>>    * Ubuntu Flavour
>>    * Ubuntu Version
>>    * Network connectivity or not
>>    * CPU family
>>    * RAM
>>    * Disk(s) size
>>    * Screen(s) resolution
>>    * GPU vendor and model
>>    * OEM Manufacturer
>>    * Location (based on the location selection made by the user at install).
>> No IP information would be gathered
>>    * Installation duration (time taken)
>>    * Auto login enabled or not
>>    * Disk layout selected
>>    * Third party software selected or not
>>    * Download updates during install or not
>>    * LivePatch enabled or not
>>
>> * Popcon would be installed.  This will allow us to spot trends in package
>> usage and help us to  focus on the packages which are of most value to our
>> users.
>>
>> * Apport would be configured to automatically send anonymous crash reports
>> without user interruption.
>>
>> The results of this data would be made public.  E.g. People would be able to
>> see that X% of Ubuntu users are based in .de vs Y% in .za.  Z% of our users
>> run Dell hardware, and so on.
>> The Ubuntu privacy policy would be updated to reflect this change.
>>
>> Any user can simply opt out by unchecking the box, which triggers one simple
>> POST stating, “diagnostics=false”.  There will be a corresponding checkbox
>> in the Privacy panel of GNOME Settings to toggle the state of this.
>>
>> And to reiterate, the service which stores this data would *never* store IP
>> addresses.
>>
>> We value your feedback and comments!
>>
>> Cheers, Will
>> On behalf of the Ubuntu Desktop Team
>>
>>
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>
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