The database of hardware

[linuxbuild]

What particular data or files you don't want to share? Probably this is already fixed in master.

I deleted /root/HW_PROBE. The one thing I saw in the data collected there in particular that spooked me was details about crypto usage, including salt. I didn't bother to look further than that.

It may be that the intention is to have hw-probe gather as much info as it can locally, and then filter it heavily before anonymizing and uploading. But the steps in that have to be made much more transparent.

Currently you can upload data in three steps: 1) hw-probe -all, 2) verify&edit /root/HW_PROBE, 3) hw-probe -upload

Ideally we should remove all suspicious strings automatically from logs and make step 2 unnecessary.

BTW Just added a patch to remove collected data from /root/HW_PROBE after uploading.

[linuxbuild]

1. After reading the first two paragraphs of this project's website I see a major flaw in the entire concept: people with incompatible hardware are less-likely to upload their computer's data than are people with systems that are working well, skewing your data and leading to false conclusions.

• They're most likely too busy trying to solve their computer issue or have gone distro-hopping

• If their issues are to do with networking, lock-ups or crashes they can't upload their data even if they wanted to

So if the purpose of this database is to get an idea about the percentage of incompatible hardware out in the wild, you're not going to get accurate data. It's going to be skewed in favor of the number of working systems.

2. I'm still extremely hinky about giving away my information. Under Privacy the site says "Most private info is not collected or hashed." (italics mine.) It doesn't say what private info is collected unhashed. It also doesn't spell out in detail exactly what is being done with the data. I want to see everything spelled out in detail: exactly what data is being collected, which of those items are hashed and which are saved in the clear, and in minute detail who is using this data and for what purposes. I also want to know who is behind this project: name, age location a photo, their background, etc. Right now I see an unknown random stranger on the Internet trying to get me to send him a bunch of data about (and from) my computer, and that's a great big fat red flag!

1. Sounds reasonable, but not actually true. 75% of uploaded probes don't contain any issues or unsupported devices. Reason to upload — check if everything works fine.

2.

I want to see everything spelled out in detail: exactly what data is being collected, which of those items are hashed and which are saved in the clear

There are two ways here:

a) Make a probe by three steps: hw-probe -all, review collected data in /root/HW_PROBE, hw-probe -upload
b) Examine the collector source code: https://github.com/linuxhw/hw-probe/blo ... w-probe.pl

Probably you'd better to use a Flatpak instead because it denies access to a meaningful info on your computer.

who is using this data and for what purposes

My work on the current and all previous positions is based on Linux. I love it. So I want to contribute to the Linux (kernel/distribution) development somehow.

Also interested to plot statistical reports like https://github.com/linuxhw/SMART based on the collected probes.

I also want to know who is behind this project: name, age location a photo, their background, etc.

Name, photo, some background, commits: https://github.com/lvc

Age 33, home location can be found by whois, work location is currently Seattle, USA.

Thanks.

[linuxbuild]

Released hw-probe 1.5 implementing requests from this thread.

[fehlix]

Released hw-probe 1.5 implementing requests from this thread.

looks promising...
version 1.5 shows still some UUID's ( in form of PARTUUID),
as efibootmgr lists NVRAM entries which seem to have PARTUUID's stored:

Code: Select all

$ grep $(lsblk -no PARTUUID /dev/vda1) ./HW_PROBE/LATEST/hw.info/logs/*
./HW_PROBE/LATEST/hw.info/logs/efibootmgr:Boot0009* MX19-Linux	HD(1,GPT,838ada09-1434-4769-8883-34ccd995ed76,0x800,0x7ed0d)/File(\EFI\MX19u\grubx64.efi)
./HW_PROBE/LATEST/hw.info/logs/efibootmgr:Boot000A* rEFInd Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,838ada09-1434-4769-8883-34ccd995ed76,0x800,0x7ed0d)/File(\EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi)

[linuxbuild]

Released hw-probe 1.5 implementing requests from this thread.

looks promising...
version 1.5 shows still some UUID's ( in form of PARTUUID),
as efibootmgr lists NVRAM entries which seem to have PARTUUID's stored:

Code: Select all

$ grep $(lsblk -no PARTUUID /dev/vda1) ./HW_PROBE/LATEST/hw.info/logs/*
./HW_PROBE/LATEST/hw.info/logs/efibootmgr:Boot0009* MX19-Linux	HD(1,GPT,838ada09-1434-4769-8883-34ccd995ed76,0x800,0x7ed0d)/File(\EFI\MX19u\grubx64.efi)
./HW_PROBE/LATEST/hw.info/logs/efibootmgr:Boot000A* rEFInd Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,838ada09-1434-4769-8883-34ccd995ed76,0x800,0x7ed0d)/File(\EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi)

Fixed in master. You can skip uploading of it currently by -disable efibootmgr additional option.

Thank you.