1662544 - Disable telemetry in Firefox for geckodriver and marionette client

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Testing :: geckodriver, task, P1)

Description

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

One aspect we have been made aware of by different developers and by the uninstall survey is that having telemetry enabled takes a certain amount of time for Firefox startup. Given that we do not send telemetry at all, it should be completely disabled.

To completely disable Telemetry the preference datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled has to be set to false.

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Some additional notes from :chutten on Matrix:

The first is that startup might not be improved as much as you think. The pref controls data upload, not Telemetry itself. Data collection was originally architected in a way to support client-local features for the user (before we learned that users didn't care), so data collecting is always on, even if it never leaves the browser

The second is that many other services look to that pref to turn systems on and off. Mostly data reporting, it might also turn off parts of normandy, shield, activity stream, pocket

And lastly, turning it from on to off will send a deletion request ping if Telemetry's had an opportunity to init with it on before you switch it to off

So you may need to leave the telemetry server set to a local server to prevent accidental internet access

Comment 2

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Oh, and I think that I will also sneak in the patch for Marionette client here.

Comment 3

[Maja Frydrychowicz :impossibus (was :maja_zf) (needinfo me)]

It's already set to false in geckodriver: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/84922363f4014eae684aabc4f1d06380066494c5/testing/geckodriver/src/prefs.rs#78

Only Marionette doesn't explicitly set it to false.

Given the comment below:

 // We want to collect telemetry, but we don't want to send in the results
 ("toolkit.telemetry.server", Pref::new("https://%(server)s/dummy/telemetry/")),

I'm curious why we wanted to collected telemetry, and when that desire changed... How was this used? Does anyone know?

Comment 4

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

And one more info:

So you should probably just remove toolkit.telemetry.server from any of the suites where you set the data upload pref to false

Comment 5

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Attachment: Bug 1662544 - [geckodriver] Don't set "toolkit.telemetry.server" to prevent side-effects.

Comment 6

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Attachment: Bug 1662544 - [marionette] Disable various Telemetry related services.

Depends on D89037

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/46e4cd2dfe73
[geckodriver] Don't set "toolkit.telemetry.server" to prevent side-effects. r=webdriver-reviewers,chutten,maja_zf
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/15cea70e79a8
[marionette] Disable various Telemetry related services. r=marionette-reviewers,chutten,maja_zf

Comment 8

[Razvan Maries]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/46e4cd2dfe73
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/15cea70e79a8