User Feedback plugin

The Feedback plugin (earlier called a "Phone Home" feature) is designed to collect and, optionally, upload configuration and usage information to MariaDB.org, or any other configured URL.

See the MariaDB User Feedback page on MariaDB.org to see collected MariaDB usage statistics.

Installation

MariaDB is distributed with this plugin included, but not installed by default. On Windows this plugin is part of the server, but disabled by default. Either way, you need to explicitly install or enable it, otherwise no feedback data will ever be sent.

Enabling plugin on Windows

add feedback=ON to the [mysqld] section in my.ini configuration file. Plugin can also be enabled during new installation - there is "Enable feedback plugin" checkbox during GUI installation, or /FEEDBACK=1 command line option if running MSI from the command line.

Enabling plugin on Unix

To verify whether the Feedback plugin is installed use a SHOW PLUGINS statement or

MariaDB [test]> SELECT plugin_status FROM information_schema.plugins WHERE plugin_name = 'feedback';
Empty set (0.01 sec)

The example above shows that the Feedback plugin is not installed. If this is the case (as above) and you want to install the plugin, you can do so with:

MariaDB [test]> INSTALL PLUGIN feedback SONAME 'feedback.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

or by adding --plugin-load=feedback.so to the server's command line or to the mysqld section in your my.cnf file.

When the plugin is installed you will see:

MariaDB [test]> SELECT plugin_status FROM information_schema.plugins WHERE plugin_name = 'feedback';
+---------------+
| plugin_status |
+---------------+
| ACTIVE        |
+---------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

Instead of ACTIVE you might see DISABLED, in this case you need to add --enable-feedback to the my.cnf file.

Configuration

The plugin can be configured with the command-line options (in the my.cnf file or on the command line). The following command-line options are available:

Collecting data

Feedback plugin is an INFORMATION_SCHEMA plugin. It creates a table with the name FEEDBACK in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA, and only the contents of this table is sent. To see the collected data try:

MariaDB [test]> SELECT * FROM information_schema.feedback;

This will include selected rows from SHOW STATUS and SHOW VARIABLES, plus versions of all installed plugins and information about the system (cpu count, memory size, OS, architecture, linux distribution). Also it includes the server UID - a SHA1 hash of the MAC address of the first network interface and the TCP port that the server listens on.

Sending data

The plugin sends the data using a POST request to any URL or a list of URLs that you specify. Both HTTP and HTTPS protocols are supported.

If data sending is enabled (feedback-url is not an empty string), the Feedback plugin will automatically send a report few minutes after a startup and once a week to all URLs in the list.

You can, alternatively, disable the automatic data sending and upload the feedback report manually. First, generate the report file with the MariaDB command-line mysql client:

$ mysql -e 'select * from information_schema.feedback' > report.txt

Then you can send it by opening http://mariadb.org/feedback_plugin/post in your browser, and uploading your generated report.txt. Or you can do it from the command line with (for example):

$ curl -F [email protected] http://mariadb.org/feedback_plugin/post

If you do not trust the plugin, manual uploading allows you to be absolutely sure that we receive only the data shown in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.FEEDBACK table and that no private or sensitive information is being sent.