Zypper & UUID

MrDamage20000 · March 20, 2019, 1:19pm

Apparently every time I use zypper, it sends a UUID to SUSE to be included in their statistics at https://metrics.opensuse.org.

How do I disable this “feature”?

Thanks :).

hcvv · March 20, 2019, 2:10pm

Connected to this one?
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/535322-Does-openSUSE-track-users

malcolmlewis · March 20, 2019, 2:15pm

On Wed 20 Mar 2019 12:26:04 PM CDT, MrDamage20000 wrote:

Apparently every time I use zypper, it sends a UUID to SUSE to be
included in their statistics at https://metrics.opensuse.org.

How do I disable this “feature”?

Thanks :).

Hi
It’s a random one for counting…

Remove the file /var/lib/zypp/AnonymousUniqueId

See: openSUSE:Statistics - openSUSE Wiki

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MrDamage20000 · March 20, 2019, 4:42pm

Great, that link explained it. Many thanks for that.

I read that other thread and was getting worried that it could be used to identify my computer, certainly completely circumventing my VPN!

Well actually it does I guess, but if that UUID file is not hardware based, and lives on my encrypted filesystem then I can live with that as at least I have some control over it.

Thanks :).

nrickert · March 20, 2019, 5:38pm

Yes, me too. I’m not going to be losing any sleep over it.

suse_rasputin · March 23, 2019, 3:06pm

Yeah, but that won’t change European legislation.

I removed yesterday from several TW installs the /var/lib/zypp/Anon… thing and checked is was gone. Did the update with zypper dup.

Guess what, after rebooting it was back…

hcvv · March 23, 2019, 3:18pm

Same contents?

malcolmlewis · March 23, 2019, 3:35pm

Hi
Either touch the file so it’s empty or just softlink to /dev/null (probably this one is better).

suse_rasputin · March 23, 2019, 4:29pm

No reboot needed, simply call zypper dup and automagically the file is back… That’s no fun.

malcolmlewis · March 23, 2019, 4:59pm

Hi
Did you check the file contents…?


cat /var/lib/zypp/AnonymousUniqueId

03xx04oo-83e3-4799-8d76-c291d5f34x34

echo > /var/lib/zypp/AnonymousUniqueId

cat /var/lib/zypp/AnonymousUniqueId
<nothing>

zypper ref
zypper dup

cat /var/lib/zypp/AnonymousUniqueId
<nothing>

rm /var/lib/zypp/AnonymousUniqueId

zypper ref
zypper dup

cat /var/lib/zypp/AnonymousUniqueId
53by09yy-563x-44f7-bc85-b75a994843d7

So either empty the file or point at /dev/null

nrickert · March 23, 2019, 5:23pm

So I moved “/var/lib/zypp/AnonymousUniqueId” to elsewhere.

I then ran “zypper lu”. That recreated the file, but with different contents. Note that this test was with Leap 15.0.

I moved the original file back, because I’m not paranoid about this simple counting method.

Another choice would be to simple remove the file just before running “zypper” each time. You could use a shell alias to do that as an automatic part of running “zypper”. Of course, running Yast Software Management probably also recreates the file.

Or create a cron job to remove the file once per day (with “/bin/rm -f” so it won’t complain if the file is missing).