# Activate your BSD Stats (plus Poll)



## DutchDaemon (May 26, 2010)

From FreeBSD-announce:



> Status:
> 
> As of this posting, we are getting reports in from all the *BSD variants:
> 
> ...



The sysutils/bsdstats port makes it very easy for you. Just install it, and it will ask you some questions on how to run:


```
Would you like to activate monthly reporting in /etc/periodic.conf [n]? y
Would you like to send a list of installed hardware as well [n]? y
Would you like to send a list of installed ports as well [n]? y
Would you like to run it now [y]? y
Posting monthly OS statistics to rpt.bsdstats.org

If running as a desktop, or on a laptop, it is recommended that you
enable bsdstats within /etc/rc.conf, so that it will run on reboot.

This will ensure that even if your computer is off when monthly runs,
your computer will be properly counted.

Would you like to activate reporting on reboot in /etc/rc.conf [n]? ..
```

That's all there is to it. Now let's boost those FreeBSD figures!

(also note that http://www.bsdstats.org provides a great way to check out which devices work well with *BSD. E.g. choose 'FreeBSD' from the pull-down menu (top right) and visit the Device Stats page)


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## DutchDaemon (May 26, 2010)

Added a poll, please fill out. Feel free to comment here.


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## SirDice (May 26, 2010)

This has been around for a very, very long time. But I never seem to have bothered with it. I'll see if I can register a few machines :e


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## DutchDaemon (May 26, 2010)

Exactly my sentiment  It looks like PC-BSD has it auto-installed, and IIRC, it used to be that way on FreeBSD long ago (I seem to remember a 'semi-automatic' option for it?).


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## SirDice (May 26, 2010)

Yeah, somewhere in the 3.x era I think it was.


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## thuglife (May 26, 2010)

Even though i have 6 FBSD boxes i use BSD stats only on my home server which is 24/7 on.


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## graudeejs (May 26, 2010)

No, PCBSD asks users during installation, if they want to submit stats.
You can turn it off during install.

I believe that is the reason, why PC-BSD has so high stats.


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## DutchDaemon (May 26, 2010)

Yeah, that's how it used to be on FreeBSD as well.


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## graudeejs (May 26, 2010)

ok, I installed bsdstats on desktop and server


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## expl (May 26, 2010)

I do not see a point in such voluntary statistics as it shows completely different outcome than it really is. The only good statistics are observational (if done correct) there is always an error in the results but its much closer to reality. And by 'observational' I mean data mining robots 'running' around web. Good example would be netcraft.com surveys, for example recent netcraft survey came to conclusion that most stable hosting company is/was http://www.datapipe.net running FreeBSD.


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## DutchDaemon (May 26, 2010)

I don't think BSDstats serves any other purpose than to compare the BSD's (and to get a nice overview of what types of hardware work and which ports are popular). It's not intended as a global BSD marketshare calculator, and it's questionable whether Netcraft can claim to be that either, because Netcraft works on the basis of submissions as well, if I'm not mistaken. It doesn't actively scan every webserver out there (and the information is only superficial (OS, webserver, uptime) and can be fooled easily).


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## expl (May 26, 2010)

DutchDaemon said:
			
		

> I don't think BSDstats serves any other purpose than to compare the BSD's (and to get a nice overview of what types of hardware work and which ports are popular). It's not intended as a global BSD marketshare calculator, and it's questionable whether Netcraft can claim to be that either, because Netcraft works on the basis of submissions as well, if I'm not mistaken. It doesn't actively scan every webserver out there (and the information is only superficial (OS, webserver, uptime) and can be fooled easily).



It does not matter what exactly bsdstats compares, you simply cant come to any conclusion with the way the data is collected (or because lack of data).

Regarding Netcraft, they rent machines in several data centers all over the world to run their data collectors (robots).



> In the May 2010 survey we received responses from 206,026,787 sites.



Now thats a big portion of the net.. And their methods are pretty reliable as a lot of specialists agree. At least I fallow their reports closely.


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## aragon (May 26, 2010)

This thread prompted me to finally install it on my FreeBSD workstation. 

Curious to know why Australia and Panama have much higher FreeBSD numbers compared to PC-BSD...

If some of these web browser popularity trackers looked for fetch(3)'s User-Agent string we might get a clearer picture of how wide spread FreeBSD is.


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## DutchDaemon (May 26, 2010)

@expl, the stated goal is:


```
What is BSD-Stats ?

This is a sampling of users of the given BSD operating systems that [B]opted in[/B] to 
install a data collection program. It is [B]not representative in any way[/B] of the total 
population of users/installations of the given BSD operating systems.

Specifically, we are trying to produce numbers for four groups:

    * Hardware Purchases
    * Hardware Vendors
    * Driver Maintainers
    * Ports Maintainers

[B]for support (ie. hardware drivers) purposes[/B].
```

In other words: no representative sample is attempted, and gathering 'inside data' (hardware, software) is the main goal. This will no doubt help developers, porters, and maybe even vendors focus their efforts.


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## john_doe (May 26, 2010)

And for a long time it's only hardware and drivers. There was only a brief time when ports statistic was shown. ;( Not useful for ports contributers and maintainers.


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## DutchDaemon (May 26, 2010)

Oh ok, I don't even know what the actual output is. But note that there are also hardware drivers in the ports tree, so that might be the connection. I think it's fair to say that the more people that run bsdstats (including, or even especially those on laptops and notebooks), the better the hardware support will eventually be. So I'd like to see those numbers go up fast (already over 300 more since this thread started, btw).


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## DutchDaemon (May 28, 2010)

Already up by 400 now, so keep adding!


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## oliverh (May 28, 2010)

I deinstalled it a long time ago as many others. If you see any real-world use apart from hype then you can call me names. But beware, I earn my money with stats.


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## aragon (May 28, 2010)

oliverh said:
			
		

> I deinstalled it a long time ago as many others. If you see any real-world use apart from hype then you can call me names. But beware, I earn my money with stats.


You might be right, but I for one installed it purely out of passion for FreeBSD.  Plus my country showed only one measly FreeBSD system!  At least there are two now.


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## foldingstock (May 28, 2010)

Just setup my OpenBSD server to report stats and devices.


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## DutchDaemon (May 28, 2010)

oliverh said:
			
		

> I deinstalled it a long time ago as many others. If you see any real-world use apart from hype then you can call me names. But beware, I earn my money with stats.



I asked scrappy@ to chime in and tell us what BSD stats are actually used for.


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## pgmrdlm (May 29, 2010)

*Just set it up on 2 of my FreeBSD machines, 1 more to go*

My business FreeBSD machine and a p4 jail machine at the house are set up. I am currently building a kde4 desktop machine, when that is done compiling(its a lowly p4 also) I will install it also.  

<Dan> watch's the chipmunks having heat stroke as they run the power wheel for the second day of compiles(xorg was yesterday).


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## vertexSymphony (May 29, 2010)

Installed with hardware/ports stats reporting


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## fbsd1 (May 30, 2010)

This application has no man page, it's website displays conflicting data. 

Compare http://www.bsdstats.org/ 
freebsd count to 
http://www.bsdstats.org/bt/home.html?os=FreeBSD   count.  

The website ports report is disabled. There was a long time error that 
caused all the data to be reported under panama that was just addressed 
2 weeks ago after someone reported his country total did not increase after 
running bsdstats for the first time.  

Also looks like freebsd systems are being counted 2 times, once in the 
freebsd bucket and once in the pcbsd bucket.

What about security for the reporting system? Nowhere does it inform the 
user or viewer about how the reporting system captures info and if the 
senderâ€™s ip address or domain name is recorded. 

The bottom line is this port should have never have been allowed in the port 
system without a man page, who ever is administrating the website is doing a 
very poor job, testing to verify reporting systems are being categorized 
correctly was never done. 

AND into this MESS you are recommending people participate.

I may agree with the general goals, but until it at least meets minimum 
standards for a competent website, I would not risk my privacy. Just think of 
the havoc a hacker could do if network location information is saved. He would 
know what ip address to direct a attack at that ran software with know bugs. 
A man page describing the application in detail and a website that also 
explains it self better are mandatory elements. What a clever way to harvest 
information for directing attacks on Freebsd systems some time in the future. 

The only thing that would make me comfortable with this application, would be 
having the freebsd security team do a security review of the complete bsdstats 
remote software, server and website to verify no personal information or 
location identification information was being harvested and the complete 
environment had a acceptable level of protection from snooping and break-ins, 
and they issued a statement to that fact. 

USER BE WARE......


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## Carpetsmoker (May 30, 2010)

This forum has 13,405 members.

In 2007 I looked at how many people posted to the FreeBSD maillist: 13,566 (http://forums.bsdnexus.com/viewtopic.php?pid=14623#p14623)

BSDStats has 8,160 computers (not users!) for all BSD's (Not just FreeBSD!). This number seems to be very very far away from the real number.
8,160 is next to nothing. To put it in perspective: Apple sold more than 1 million iPads already.
So, if anything, this is more damaging then helpful. Assuming someone takes this number seriously that is.

I disabled bsdstats on all my computers after one of my machines rebooted without internet for some reason and it got hung on the bsdstats rc.d startup script. Since it's fairly useless anyway I decided that was a good moment to stop using it.

There are many better ways to get an approximate count of the number of BSD machines:
- Look at the number of active people on forums, maillists, etc.
- Look at cvsup stats
- Netcraft
- Unique hits on the FreeBSD handbook
- ... etc ...


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## Anonymous (May 30, 2010)

I don't have BSDSTATS omn my computer but what is the most important IMO is how many users have just BSD as OS (I have just FreeBSD, before I had just Linux and before I had just OS/2).
There are many users which main OS is Windows and than "play' a little with different Linux distros, BSD...
BTW: at work I have Mac and I like it...it works but at home computer with FreeBSD and all of this updates it is nothing same as before. Sorry.


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## john_doe (May 31, 2010)

Carpetsmoker said:
			
		

> There are many better ways to get an approximate count of the number of BSD machines:
> - Look at the number of active people on forums, maillists, etc.
> - Look at cvsup stats
> - Netcraft
> ...


What about drivers/ports then? It's very useful to know approximate ratio when introducing breaking changes or cutting off unused parts. Here is an example





			
				&quot said:
			
		

> gpalmer@[/url]"]Marc also did work on bsdstats (http://www.bsdstats.org/).  If you
> want to push for older devices to be supported, it might be worthwhile
> encouraging people to register their systems in bsdstats, especially
> if they have hardware that is not currently shipping in new products.
> ...


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## expl (May 31, 2010)

john_doe said:
			
		

> What about drivers/ports then? It's very useful to know approximate ratio when introducing breaking changes or cutting off unused parts. Here is an example



If FreeBSD team wants to know what hardware I have they should write proper stats system and add it to sysinstall so I can choose if I want to upload it after doing a fresh install or when ever I want to update my hardware stats by launching sysintall again (no rc.d scripts or cron jobs please). That way more people would be willing to share their stats and you would actually get usefull amounts of data. Bsdstats tool is just wrong way to do it.

Edit:

What also would be very usefull if the stats tool would be capable to recognize devices with no drivers attached and send detailed info about them (from interface they belongs to) to the db. Rather than needing to manually extract it and send it via the FreeBSD bug PR form.


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## graudeejs (May 31, 2010)

expl said:
			
		

> If FreeBSD team wants to know what hardware I have they should write proper stats system and add it to sysinstall so I can choose if I want to upload it after doing a fresh install or when ever I want to update my hardware stats by launching sysintall again (no rc.d scripts or cron jobs please). That way more people would be willing to share their stats and you would actually get usefull amounts of data. Bsdstats tool is just wrong way to do it.



I like how OpenBSD do this.
One system is installed and you login, you get email from system, asking to send your dmesg or something like that to openbsd. I love this method (however it has it's drawback, [need to setup mail system, however this can be worked around]


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## DutchDaemon (Jun 5, 2010)

@killasmurf86 -> something like this?


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## Dereckson (Jun 21, 2010)

> No, PCBSD asks users during installation, if they want to submit stats.
> You can turn it off during install.
> 
> I believe that is the reason, why PC-BSD has so high stats.



Well 10 000 computers is rather low, for ''high stats''. Would that mean:

(1) than the majority of PCBSD users uncheck the statistics checkbox
(2) than there is less than 18 000 PCBSD installations currently running?
(3) it's a checkbox by default unchecked?


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## kdemidofff (Jun 24, 2010)

```
/usr/local/etc/periodic/monthly/300.statistics -nodelay
fetch: transfer timed out
fetch: transfer timed out
Posting monthly OS statistics to rpt.bsdstats.org
fetch: transfer timed out
```


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## DutchDaemon (Jun 24, 2010)

Yeah, I've seen that problem for a couple of days now, at boot time (I run bsdstats from rc.conf on my laptop). The host rpt.bsdstats.org does not resolve, though the rest of that network is still up.


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## graudeejs (Jun 30, 2010)

Those that haven't please read this thread
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=15539


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## churchi (Jul 8, 2010)

just installed and tracking. proud FreeBSD user.


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