Use of a package?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 11:51:56AM -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On 10/09/2012 11:07 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> >On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 01:29:04PM -0400, Eric H. Christensen wrote:
> >>Well, if I don't know *if* it's being used I certainly can't ask the
> >>unknown masses. :) I was just looking at some of the packages I recently
> >>adopted and noted that many of them seem to have dead or dying upstream.
> >>That isn't to say the software isn't still useful but if folks aren't
> >>using them... You get what I'm saying.
> >
> >Oooh that. Yes, this would be good -- I understand there's work on a new
> >"census" program to replace smolt, but I don't know the details.
> >
> 
> Each time this is brought up, the arguments are made that it's
> flawed data.  Just because a package is installed does not mean that
> the package is /used/.  Generally this leads to suggestions about
> tracking actual launches or access of files of a package, then
> privacy arguments, and then nothing happens.

FWIW popcon sends the atime of package files [all files or just
binaries?] to determine whether a program has been run.  I don't know
if this works with relatime or not, but I assume Debian have thought
of this.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines.  Tiny program with many
powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top