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#1 2010-12-07 13:52:29

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13786

automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

Hi Piwigo Community,

We have been discussing with P@t about Smarty 3.0 which requires PHP 5.2. Piwigo currently requires PHP 5.0 and the truth is that we have no idea about how large is the PHP 5.2 deployment today.

So I proposed to collect this information when Piwigo (installed on your website) performs requests on piwigo.org. This happens when you list the available plugins, themes, languages or check the availability of a new Piwigo release.

[Bugtracker] ticket 2048

Of course, the idea is not to collect personal information. The opensource development model followed by Piwigo guarantees that Piwigo coding team is not trying to collect data about you, because anybody can review the code. The idea is to know if we can change the requirement to PHP 5.2 for example.

To avoid duplicate information, we create a unique id for each Piwigo installation :

Code:

$uuid = hash_hmac('md5', get_absolute_root_url(), $conf['secret_key'])

this way, piwigo.org doesn't know your website URL but your $uuid remains the same as long as you don't modify your secret_key or move your Piwigo installation to somewhere else.

For Piwigo 2.1.6, it is planned to send : operating system, PHP version, database engine (mysql/postgresql/sqlite), database engine version.

Don't see any evil in this feature, I want to make it perfectly transparent. This collected data will be stored in a database on piwigo.org server.

Please, feel free to post your comment about this feature.

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#2 2010-12-07 15:15:15

rvelices
Former Piwigo Team
2005-12-29
1960

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

I think the hash of the server name should be enough for all this. No ?

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#3 2010-12-07 15:39:09

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13786

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

rvelices wrote:

I think the hash of the server name should be enough for all this. No ?

you mean:

Code:

$uuid = md5($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);

?

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#4 2010-12-07 16:10:00

rvelices
Former Piwigo Team
2005-12-29
1960

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

yes; at least for db version, os version, php version,

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#5 2010-12-07 18:54:44

grum
Former Piwigo Team
Pantin
2007-09-10
1371

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

Before sending information, I think the user must have the choice :
- display a message with data being sended
- add a checkbox "I agree to send anonymously theses information to piwigo.org"


My pictures with Piwigo, of course !
[ www.grum.fr ]

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#6 2010-12-07 21:00:02

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13786

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

grum wrote:

Before sending information, I think the user must have the choice :
- display a message with data being sended
- add a checkbox "I agree to send anonymously theses information to piwigo.org"

I agree on theory. In practice, it produces a complex ergonomy. 99.9% users don't care and I absolutely don't agree to show a highly technical info (PHP/MySQL versions are technical information) while a user just want to list available plugins from piwigo.org repository.

The other way to do it is to add an action link "send anonymously a few technical data on piwigo.org to help Piwigo team know your technical environment" on administration homepage with a tooltip that list data that are going to be sent. The problem with this method is that we will get 100 times less data (at least).

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#7 2010-12-07 22:23:10

LucMorizur
Member
Vienne (Isère) - France
2009-04-30
171

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

plg wrote:

grum wrote:

Before sending information, I think the user must have the choice :
- display a message with data being sended
- add a checkbox "I agree to send anonymously theses information to piwigo.org"

I agree on theory. In practice, it produces a complex ergonomy. 99.9% users don't care and I absolutely don't agree to show a highly technical info (PHP/MySQL versions are technical information) while a user just want to list available plugins from piwigo.org repository.

The other way to do it is to add an action link "send anonymously a few technical data on piwigo.org to help Piwigo team know your technical environment" on administration homepage with a tooltip that list data that are going to be sent. The problem with this method is that we will get 100 times less data (at least).

Personnally I agree to both points of view -- not convenient.

Eventually, we can say that as long as the approach of Piwigo has been clearly described here, this is already showing some transparency to the users of Piwigo :-/ ? I know this input is not so much satisfying, but indeed to get nice statistics some data is needed.


Our gallery : Le Site à Nous (a silly name in french, but here I don't care ;-) ! )
An event, a new gallery ? Plugin Event Cats
My test gallery : Tests Piwigo de Luc
Thanksalot for this beautiful project.

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#8 2010-12-07 22:25:12

ddtddt
Piwigo Team
Quetigny - France
2007-07-27
7201

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

Is that information is so important that ?


You love Piwigo so don't hesitate to participate, learn more on the "Contribute to Piwigo" page. If you don't have much time for contribution, you can also help the project with a donation.

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#9 2010-12-07 22:34:03

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13786

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

ddtddt wrote:

Is that information is so important that ?

The information could be very useful, yes.

But if this feature makes Piwigo less friendly to users than it is currently, then it is not worth the trouble.

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#10 2010-12-08 11:15:41

grum
Former Piwigo Team
Pantin
2007-09-10
1371

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

the data could be send :
- when piwigo is installed
- when piwigo is updated


In the install process, after gallery is installed, we can add a page :
- with a pre-checked option "I agree to anonymously send data (....) "
- with a button "see detail" (displayed with js)

In the upgrade process, before updating the gallery, add a page similar page.


My pictures with Piwigo, of course !
[ www.grum.fr ]

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#11 2010-12-08 13:47:40

LucMorizur
Member
Vienne (Isère) - France
2009-04-30
171

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

grum wrote:

In the install process, after gallery is installed, we can add a page :
- with a pre-checked option "I agree to anonymously send data (....) "

Usually speaking, each time I meet such a text, I automatically uncheck the option without reading the end of the text or trying to understand what it is about. So I fear we get less information if we provide the possibility to do so -- while, once again, I would somehow rather prefer this solution; I'm literally torn between both points of view, I almost did not sleep this night... no that's not true ;-) .

But I mean, we have no commercial purpose on piwigo.org, many people here know perfectly that no harm can come from the fact that the software does send automatically some technical information -- unless I'm not aware of some harm that could actually occur, maybe of course some consequences I don't imagine can happen in fact.
I would personnally suggest just an information sentence in the admin part, "Piwigo has automatically sent informations about your MySQL version [...]; for more information see [a link to this current topic, or another one explaining the thing]".

Well now this is just to tell a point of view; I would really understand that some other better arguments could make the choice be different of course :-) .


Our gallery : Le Site à Nous (a silly name in french, but here I don't care ;-) ! )
An event, a new gallery ? Plugin Event Cats
My test gallery : Tests Piwigo de Luc
Thanksalot for this beautiful project.

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#12 2010-12-08 15:43:30

P@t
Piwigo Team
Nice
2007-06-13
4098

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

grum wrote:

Before sending information, I think the user must have the choice :
- display a message with data being sended
- add a checkbox "I agree to send anonymously theses information to piwigo.org"

I don't agree... when you surf on the web, your browser always send user data to web sites (google, ebay, etc...). When you check plugins upgrade in piwigo, some data are already sent to piwigo server (like installed plugins and piwigo version).
We will not send user data to piwigo server, but only hoster data, this is completely different, and users don't have to care about that...


P@t

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#13 2010-12-11 00:40:02

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13786

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

grum wrote:

the data could be send :
- when piwigo is installed
- when piwigo is updated


In the install process, after gallery is installed, we can add a page :
- with a pre-checked option "I agree to anonymously send data (....) "
- with a button "see detail" (displayed with js)

In the upgrade process, before updating the gallery, add a page similar page.

This is a solution Gotcha also proposed me in a private discussion. I was tend to agree but on the other side I think P@t has really good arguments:

* for plugins/themes administration screens, Piwigo already sends the current Piwigo version
* for plugins administration screens, Piwigo already sends the list of installed plugins

Adding the PHP/MySQL versions are really not a big deal.

In addition to this let's see what Apache does when you meet a 404 error, you get such a page:

Not Found

The requested URL ***** was not found on this server.

Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) DAV/2 SVN/1.5.1 PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny9 with Suhosin-Patch mod_wsgi/2.5 Python/2.5.2 Server at piwigo.org

And nowhere during Apache installation I was asked if I agreed about showing such details. I can modify Apache configuration to hide these details, but by default they are shown.

So, considering that these are not personnal data but server technical data, I wonder why we shouldn't take example on Apache, ie sending them by default and being able to disable them with a simple configuration setting.

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#14 2010-12-12 01:05:02

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13786

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

P@t and I have worked on this topic tonight. The hosting technical details are transmitted only to piwigo.org/ext/api/get_version_list.php, in POST variables and only if $conf['send_hosting_technical_details'] is true (true by default). On piwigo.org side, we store something like:

Code:

mysql> select * from pwg_hosting_details limit 1\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
id_hosting_details: 1
              uuid: 4a83711ea6a26fab89c4de877a0ed769
        created_on: 2010-12-12 00:31:19
        updated_on: 2010-12-12 00:34:48
                os: Linux
        pwgversion: 2.1
        phpversion: 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.5
          dbengine: MySQL
         dbversion: 5.1.41-3ubuntu12.7
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

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#15 2010-12-12 01:07:36

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13786

Re: automatic survey on PHP/MySQL versions, no evil

and no data transmitted if you're on localhost

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