pkgstats: contribution was never that easy

Pierre · 2008-11-07 01:59:20

Annoying bug you filed not fixed? Waiting on a package to be updated? If only there was some way you could help out and improve everybody's favourite Linux distribution... (in case you are wondering, I mean Arch).

Wait! There is! Just install the pkgstats package (pacman -Sy pkgstats), run the /usr/bin/pkgstats script as a user and help the Arch developers prioritize their efforts. Come on, all the cool kids are doing it. You can be like them!

Edit: This script only submits a list of installed packages and your architecture. In addition to this a hash of your IP is logged to ensure that not only one man is able to make the whole statistics useless.

As of version 1.0-2 the -h parameter is supported and will show you some information. (the script itself does the same as before) Of course there will be a site with some stats.

In an ideal world one would run the script only once per installation or if really lot of things have changed (not the version of packages). For example if you uninstalled Gnome and installed KDE.

See the source of simple bash script located at /usr/bin/pkgstats if you really want to know what it does. The data are sent to the following script running at archlinux.de: http://git.archlinux.de/www.archlinux.d … geList.php

Last edited by Pierre (2008-11-07 12:08:43)

Ranguvar · 2008-11-07 02:07:23

Good, idea, that! Will we also get to see some stats generated from this? Sounds interesting.

Also, what exactly is collected? Just the list of packages installed, or anything else?

Pierre · 2008-11-07 02:13:21

Yes, of course. There will be some funky stats later. For now it only sends the architecture you use and a lsit of all installed packages. See the script: # less /usr/bin/pkgstats

lamnk · 2008-11-07 02:51:04

lamnk@smith:~% pacman -Sy pkgstats
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
pkgstats package not found, searching for group...
error: 'pkgstats': not found in sync db

It's still not there ?

Misfit138 · 2008-11-07 02:57:33

Stickied!

stonecrest · 2008-11-07 03:48:40

$ pkgstats --help
Thanks for your submission. :-)

Heh, alright then.

fukawi2 · 2008-11-07 04:24:32

lamnk wrote:

lamnk@smith:~% pacman -Sy pkgstats
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
pkgstats package not found, searching for group...
error: 'pkgstats': not found in sync db

It's still not there ?

Mirror not syc'ed I'd guess. I had to -Sy (since last night) so it's definately very fresh package - try a different mirror.

fukawi2 · 2008-11-07 04:27:47

$ pkgstats 
Failure: You allready submitted your package list via 202.14.166.251 at Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:21:49 +0100.
         You are blocked until Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:21:49 +0100

Fail. I have an Arch desktop and laptop at work through the same router. And a Desktop, Server and second Laptop at home through the same router

Can it be made unique using `ip-address + hostname`?

(and 'already' only has 1 L )

Last edited by fukawi2 (2008-11-07 04:28:46)

toofishes · 2008-11-07 04:52:33

fukawi2 wrote:

$ pkgstats 
Failure: You allready submitted your package list via 202.14.166.251 at Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:21:49 +0100.
         You are blocked until Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:21:49 +0100
Fail. I have an Arch desktop and laptop at work through the same router. And a Desktop, Server and second Laptop at home through the same router
Can it be made unique using `ip-address + hostname`?
(and 'already' only has 1 L )

No, because IP address is the only thing we can reliably discriminate submissions on that isn't user provided.

If you really want to be helpful, you can submit one of your machines each day. But there should be enough info out there from all the submissions that we will get the big picture, even if you can't submit all of your individual machines.

Allan · 2008-11-07 05:45:44

I wanted to call this galpus (Great Arch Linux Package Usage Survey) but it sounds kinda bad...

Anyway, I am already seeing some cool stats here. E.g. currently 85 i686 user have submitted and 24 x86_64. So thats 3.5 times as many i686 users. Still early days but I am going to find this interesting! A statisticians dream!

mentallaxative · 2008-11-07 05:46:57

This is a really good idea! I'd love to see the statistics when everyone has submitted.

Eldomir · 2008-11-07 06:09:32

Excellent news! Thank you. I can't wait to read more about it (man, --help when they're ready) and to see our stats

lucke · 2008-11-07 08:23:47

Wasn't archstats a bit more sophisticated? Why not stick to that?

catwell · 2008-11-07 08:27:18

Great idea. It's sad that it's relying on IP addresses though, because for example in my school we're all behind a NAT (which means one IP address for everybody)... It must be the same for a lot of other people too.

Yet, I understand that the problem comes from our school who chose not to give us public addresses and not from you, it's the same when we get banned from Battle.net...

jordz · 2008-11-07 08:36:14

I submitted my server and laptop Is there going to be a public site to view the stats or is it going to be build in pkgstats?
Looking forward to the stats!

Lord Illidan · 2008-11-07 09:18:39

Submitted my laptop. Very good idea, thanks!

Pierre · 2008-11-07 10:50:48

Alright, I have updated the orignal post with some more detailed information.

xcession · 2008-11-07 11:13:26

submited my dev-serv pc and my eeepc...

Dieter@be · 2008-11-07 11:55:03

Thanks for your submission. :-)

you're welcome.

I'm curious for the frontend to see the stats. And maybe we can integrate the numbers into flyspray.. ooh..

Last edited by Dieter@be (2008-11-07 11:55:20)

Llama · 2008-11-07 12:02:58

Since it looks like a proposition nobody's likely to turn down, we are going to have something like a real count of users/installations, aren't we?

wuischke · 2008-11-07 12:10:11

I only installed i686 by mistake (wrong installation CD), so don't neglect x64 because there are more i686 users.

Submitted laptop, tomorrow I'll submit my desktop.

Allan · 2008-11-07 12:18:27

Not everyone will see this or submit there results so the total numbers will provide us an indication of the number of installs, but an indication is all. What it will tell us is the popularity of various packages and allow us to assess the popularity of the packages in the repos/unsupported and to focus our efforts.

FYI - 374 submissions so far

SiC · 2008-11-07 12:31:34

It would be a good idea if rather than using IP addresses you could setup an account for each person and then have multiple machines per account. That way you could obtain greater usage statistics (installed machine base for example) and also to allow more detailed analysis over time, for example do people have different desktop environments installed on their desktops as compared laptops for example.

Sounds very interesting though nonetheless, and I'd be very interested in the results, and am quite happy to donate time to analysing the results if you want

sparky · 2008-11-07 12:32:29

Just a suggestion building on what's been said before...perhaps data could also be submitted for hostname *and*, say, username for the forums?

This way, you're much more likely to uniquely identify a user and machine, which could easily be used to keep the stats fresh. I'm not suggesting any complicated back-end programming to verify passwords or usernames, just a prompt when the script is run, based on the honor system.

Now you could collect more meaningful stats for Archers running multiple machines with different package sets (laptop vs. server, which may show up under the same public IP, possibly leaving one disregarded with IP only identification), and also give insight when a user does something like switch WM's. You could also see that if sparky re-submits stats for hostname 'smak', that the older data can be disregarded or refreshed.

For the sake of privacy, this data could probably be hidden from the general public, but available to those who could benifit from it (Dev's, TUs, etc).

Anyway, just my 2 cents, take it for what it's worth.

EDIT: SiC, you beat me to it by about a minute!!

Last edited by sparky (2008-11-07 12:33:03)

powerthunder · 2008-11-07 12:55:56

Very nice idea, soon I 'll submit my laptop.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-11-07 01:59:20

pkgstats: contribution was never that easy

#2 2008-11-07 02:07:23

Re: pkgstats: contribution was never that easy

#3 2008-11-07 02:13:21

Re: pkgstats: contribution was never that easy

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