Why Google Survey at the end of a fresh installation?

[rpi4.local]

A few months ago, when I was installing Raspbian, I was not sent to a Google Survey on the first time starting up the browser after a fresh install of Raspbian.

Having reinstalled a Pi 4 recently with Raspberry Pi OS, I'm astonished to see that the browser points me to a Google Survey. What's up with that? I guess a lot of people here highly dislike Google as a company. So I'm wondering why the girls and guys at Raspberry HQ thought it would be a good idea to make this Google Survey, instead of having a survey on their own website?

Maybe someone can explain to me what's up with that. Thanks.

[FTrevorGowen]

AIUI it's not a "Google Survey" but happens to use a Google form (ie. the responses are anonymous to Google). Have you read the relevant blog post: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/latest ... -may-2020/ ?
Trev.

[PeterO]

From the blog entry : "You’ll notice at the bottom of the questionnaire there is a field which is automatically filled in with a long string of letters and numbers." This doesn't seem to work correctly on PIOS64 as mine came up with something like "FAILED TO IDENTIFY" (I didn't write it down at the time).

PeterO

[pidd]

This doesn't seem to work correctly on PIOS64 as mine came up with something like "FAILED TO IDENTIFY" (I didn't write it down at the time).

I had that pop up the first time withut PIOS64, then after I went back to scratch it pulled the serial number.

[trejan]

From the blog entry : "You’ll notice at the bottom of the questionnaire there is a field which is automatically filled in with a long string of letters and numbers." This doesn't seem to work correctly on PIOS64 as mine came up with something like "FAILED TO IDENTIFY" (I didn't write it down at the time).

Did the Pi first-run wizard run? There is a function in there that edits the Chromium first-run tabs setting in the config to insert a SHA256 hashed serial number into the Google survey URL. If it doesn't work then you only see UNIDENTIFIED.

[PeterO]

From the blog entry : "You’ll notice at the bottom of the questionnaire there is a field which is automatically filled in with a long string of letters and numbers." This doesn't seem to work correctly on PIOS64 as mine came up with something like "FAILED TO IDENTIFY" (I didn't write it down at the time).

Did the Pi first-run wizard run?

Which bit of the install process is that ?
I was installing PIOS64 which had been freshly written to a USB-HDD so the "first boot" was from there (if that matters).
Add yes, "UNIDENTIFIED" rings a bell
PeterO

[trejan]

Which bit of the install process is that ?

The "Welcome to the Raspberry Pi Desktop!" program that asks about your keyboard layout, language etc... One of the first few things it does is edit the Chromium config to add that hashed serial number. The default is UNIDENTIFIED so if you still saw it then piwiz didn't run or it wasn't able to edit the file.

[PeterO]

Which bit of the install process is that ?

The "Welcome to the Raspberry Pi Desktop!" program that asks about your keyboard layout, language etc... One of the first few things it does is edit the Chromium config to add that hashed serial number. The default is UNIDENTIFIED so if you still saw it then piwiz didn't run or it wasn't able to edit the file.

Well that did run .....
If I run in again.....

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ piwiz
sed: couldn't open temporary file /etc/chromium/sedGzNW7X: Permission denied
pi@raspberrypi:~ $

Bingo !
But hold on,. that's because I'm running it as pi and not as root which I assume it does during installation....
/etc/master_preferences did still had UNIDENTIFIED in it, but now after I've run it as "sudo piwiz" it has the expected long hashs in place.
PeterO



PeterO

[trejan]

Well that did run .....

Ah. It is a bug that they already fixed. The version of piwiz in the beta PiOS64 image doesn't have the correct location of the Chromium config file so it never swaps out the UNIDENTIFIED for the serial number.

[PeterO]

OK, so was that fixed in the first update/upgrade cycle ?
I didn't let the update run from piwiz as I wanted to see if much had been updated already !
PeterO

PS: Just checked apt log and yes it did get upgraded.

[trejan]

OK, so was that fixed in the first update/upgrade cycle ? Just checked apt log and yes it did get upgraded.)
I didn't let the update run from piwiz as I wanted to see if much had been updated already !

piwiz is fixed once it updates but you'd need to run it again for it to edit the Chromium file. The next PiOS64 beta image should have this working from start. The PiOS32 images were fine as their version of Chromium does keep the config files in that other location.

[trejan]

But hold on,. that's because I'm running it as pi and not as root which I assume it does during installation....
/etc/master_preferences did still had UNIDENTIFIED in it, but now after I've run it as "sudo piwiz" it has the expected long hashs in place.

Yep. There is a piwiz.desktop in /etc/xdg/autostart that will run "sudo piwiz". piwiz deletes that file when it exits so it only runs once.

[trejan]

Semi-random tangent. I did wonder how the "Automatic keyboard language detection" worked for the official Pi keyboards. The autoconfiguration is done by piwiz at startup so if you're running the Lite version you will need to manually configure it. It looks for a USB device with VID:PID 04D9:0006 and a product description which includes "RPI Wired Keyboard". There is a number appended to the end of that description which refers to a list of keyboard layouts in piwiz.

[rpi4.local]

AIUI it's not a "Google Survey" but happens to use a Google form (ie. the responses are anonymous to Google). Have you read the relevant blog post: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/latest ... -may-2020/ ?
Trev.

Thanks!