http://genome.sph.umich.edu/w/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=PhoneHome 2026-10-12T02:43:48Z Revision history for this page on the wiki MediaWiki 1.43.1 http://genome.sph.umich.edu/w/index.php?title=PhoneHome&diff=9297&oldid=prev 2014-01-06T20:24:05Z

<p>Created page with &quot;= Phone Home Description = PhoneHome means a program will check and report to the user if a new version is available. The program will also send a completion status back to t...&quot;</p> <p><b>New page</b></p><div>= Phone Home Description =<br /> PhoneHome means a program will check and report to the user if a new version is available. The program will also send a completion status back to the University of Michigan. This enables us to gather some usage statistics.<br /> <br /> PhoneHome is enabled by default, but will not happen on every run. Each run generates a random number (seeded by time). PhoneHome will only occur if the random number modulo 100 is less than the thinning parameter. Most programs default the thinning parameter to 50.<br /> <br /> In most programs, PhoneHome can be completely disabled by using the &lt;code&gt;--noPhoneHome&lt;/code&gt; parameter.<br /> <br /> In many programs, the thinning parameter can be adjusted using the &lt;code&gt;--phoneHomeThinning&lt;/code&gt; parameter followed by the new value.<br /> <br /> <br /> = Why do we want usage statistics? =<br /> * To show that our tools are being used (and justify our time spent)<br /> * To see which tools/functions are most heavily utilized so we can appropriately focus our efforts<br /> * To get feedback if users are often encountering errors<br /> <br /> <br /> =What gets sent to the University of Michigan?=<br /> Your program will hit one of our URLs providing the following information:<br /> * program name - the name of the executable you are running (pathname is NOT included)<br /> * argument names - the argument names you specified, but NOT any user specified value<br /> * version number - the version of the tool you are running (hard coded at compile time)<br /> * random number - a random number for this run (seeded by time), helps link the version check PhoneHome with the completion status PhoneHome<br /> * thinning parameter - percentage of time the the tool is configured to report back (0-100), default is 50<br /> * return status - 0 (success), Exception, or Error (it will not include a description of the exception/error)<br /> <br /> <br /> = Example =<br /> For example if you run:<br /> /home/mktrost/bamUtil_1.0.10/bin/bam convert --in myInFile.sam --out myOutFile.bam<br /> <br /> It will pass something like these parameters back to us: <br /> pgm=bam:convert&amp;vsn=1.0.10&amp;uniqNum=1448588715&amp;thinning=50<br /> and<br /> pgm=bam:convert&amp;vsn=1.0.10&amp;uniqNum=1448588715&amp;thinning=50&amp;status=Exception</div>

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