Background
Smolt is a project for gathering hardware information from users. It consists of a client side package installed on users computers and a server side that the client reports to. For Fedora installs the user is asked at 'firstboot' time if they wish to send their information to the server, if they accept information is sent then, and approximately every month thereafter. This information is stored in a database and scripts are run to generate general statistics over the dataset. In addition a wiki is run on the server side allowing users to provide feedback on specific hardware items.
Rationale
Smolt is largely unmaintained upstream. ( The last upstream commit was more than 10 months ago)
Smolts reporting scripts do not function under RHEL6.
The information smolt gathers is somewhat limited.
There's a planned replacement on the horizon.
For all these reasons, Fedora Infrastructure will be retiring smolt
Schedule
2012-09-11 - Start gathering requirements and decide timelines
Dependencies
This is a list of things we need to do before smolt can be retired:
- firstboot should no longer call or use smolt.
- smolt should no longer be shipped on install or live media
- We need to determine what kind of server/instance we should keep live for a few years for historical installs that still try and report to smolt.
- Push an update to the smolt client that disables the cron job on client machines?
- The existing smolt database should be made available for folks to datamine/reuse?
- Should announce a date when the retirement will take place.
- Redirect smolt reporting somehow to census?
- setup smolts.org and related pages to note the retirement and point users to census.
Replacement
A replacement for smolt is being developed. See: https://fedorahosted.org/census/