Packaging ksctl (CLI) for openSUSE: How to set the telemetry.clientIdentity?

[kastl-ars]

Dear maintainers,

I started packaging the ksctl CLI for openSUSE. I got a working binary, i.e. I can run it and ask for --help or the version information. I have not tested any real commands right now, still digging through the documentation.

For now I have set the telemetry.clientIdentity to the openSUSE string, as it needs to be set during build apparently. Is there any documentation on this flag? Why and how it needs to be set? I am not a golang developer...

Kind Regards
Johannes

[dipankardas011]

@kastl-ars

I started packaging the ksctl CLI for openSUSE. I got a working binary, i.e. I can run it and ask for --help or the version information. I have not tested any real commands right now, still digging through the documentation.

That is so nice of you, thanks for your efforts. Surely we will help. Yes most of the things will work!

also did you compiled it using makefile?

For now I have set the telemetry.clientIdentity to the openSUSE string, as it needs to be set during build apparently. Is there any documentation on this flag? Why and how it needs to be set? I am not a golang developer...

Its value gets added during compilation of LD_FLAGS, So it is a secret value so that we Can Communicate with our external service and be sure only ksctl cli is the client. Just to be safe from unexpected traffic

Currently it helps us get the telemetry data like that is the command all our users are executing and are their any problems

for your testing what you can do is modify this ksctl config

cat ~/.config/ksctl/config.json

with this

{"preferedStateStore":"store-local","telemetry":false}

Current Build Pipeline is Github Actions here you can find its reference https://github.com/ksctl/cli/blob/53259661540e9ae976e44e3cf816386915b10383/.github/workflows/goreleaser.yml#L54

Let me know if any help is needed from our end

[dipankardas011]

cc @ksctl/maintainers-for-core

[kastl-ars]

Thanks for the quick reply, @dipankardas011!

I understood that this is a secret value, but it needs to be set during compilation (or the build fails).

So, setting it to anything except your secret would

• let the build pass AND
• make sure no telemetry is sent?

Or is the user getting lots of errors due to the "wrong" secret?

Is there a way to disable the telemetry during build, as obviously I cannot set your secret in our build environment (it is not supposed to have secrets at all). Having each user disable the telemetry is not a working approach....

Kind Regards,
Johannes

[dipankardas011]

@kastl-ars By default the telemetry is enabled in fresh install
but you can configure it using 2 methods

• modify $HOME/.config/ksctl/config.json (It gets created if it doesn't exist)

{"preferedStateStore":"store-local","telemetry":false}

you just modify the telemetry field to false

OR

• $ ksctl configure telemetry

So here is the direct go build command which will do the thing

#!/bin/bash

ksctl_core=$(curl -sSfL https://api.github.com/repos/ksctl/ksctl/releases/latest)

CURR_DATE=$(date '+%d-%m-%Y')
CURR_VER=$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)
KSCTL_CORE=$(echo $ksctl_core | jq -r '.tag_name')

CLI_IDENTITY=secrettoken

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build \
  -o ksctl-linux-amd64 \
  -ldflags="-s -w \
    -X github.com/ksctl/cli/v2/pkg/config.BuildDate=${CURR_DATE} \
    -X github.com/ksctl/cli/v2/pkg/config.Version=${CURR_VER} \
    -X github.com/ksctl/cli/v2/pkg/config.KsctlCoreVer=${KSCTL_CORE} \
    -X github.com/ksctl/cli/v2/pkg/telemetry.clientIdentity=${CLI_IDENTITY}"

[kastl-ars]

Thanks for the reply, but that does unfortunately not answer my question:

Is there a way to disable the telemetry during build [...]. Having each user disable the telemetry is not a working approach....

[dipankardas011]

Thanks for the reply, but that does unfortunately not answer my question:

Currently there is no way to disable telemetry during build as its handled by only the above config.json and this file gets loaded when you invoke this cli tool if its false it will not use the telemetry section

[kastl-ars]

Thanks for the confirmation. Would it be possible/feasible to implement such a switch? Without causing too much trouble?

[dipankardas011]

yes the build system will be same
we only need to have this file ~/.config/ksctl/config.json to be there with telemetry set as false

[kastl-ars]

You misunderstood my question. Would it be possible to implement a switch/ldflag/... to disable the telemetry during build?
As builds outside of your GitHub account will never be able to set the proper secret, telemetry in those builds is useless. So it would be nice to disable telemetry during build.

[dipankardas011]

Okay for clarity what is the destination build system are you referring to(other than your local build)?

[kastl-ars]

openSUSE packages are being built on the OpenBuildSystem (OBS):
https://build.opensuse.org/

[dipankardas011]

Also as I see you are having concerns regarding telemetry coming in way but you can set anything for now regardless of successful/unsuccessful telemetry send it should not cause failure in the actual running of the application we don't handle the errors

also we will currently check if opensuse has any sort of secrets store for us to use.
otherthan that ig you can continue with any random string and later we can come up with something (🤞🏼 we have secrets store in opensuse build which is free)

[kastl-ars]

I am a packager for openSUSE. I can tell you that the build service does not offer that functionality. This far there was no need to have secrets for builds.

And as most people in linux distributions are privacy-aware, having telemetry enabled by default is something frowned upon. Having it opt-in by the user explicitly enabling it is another topic.

For now I will just set the openSUSE string and continue testing the package.

[dipankardas011]

Hi @kastl-ars did it worked?