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# DNF Count Me support
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Classic DNF based operating systems can use the [DNF Count Me feature][countme]
to anonymously report how long a system has been running without impacting the
user privacy. This is implemented as an additional `countme` variable added to
requests made to fetch RPM repository metadata. On those systems, this value is
added randomly to requests made automatically via the `dnf-makecache.timer` or
via explicit calls to `dnf update` or `dnf install`.

However, this does not work for `rpm-ostree` based systems as in the default
case (no package overlayed on top of the base commit), `rpm-ostree` will not
fetch any RPM repository metadata at all.

Thus `rpm-ostree` includes a distinct timer (`rpm-ostree-countme.timer`),
triggered weekly, that implement the DNF Count Me functionality in a
standalone way.

## Disabling DNF Count Me on a system

To disable this feature, you need to stop the `rpm-ostree-countme.timer` and
mask the corresponding unit as a precaution:

```
$ systemctl mask --now rpm-ostree-countme.timer
```

If you have packages layered on top of the base image from an RPM repository,
then you will have to make sure that the `countme` option is disabled there
until we fix [this issue in libdnf][libdnfissue]:

```
$ sed -i 's/countme=1/countme=0/g' /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo
```

Note that once you do that, those repository configuration files will be
considered as locally modified by ostree which will hence ignore any other
changes to the defaults that may happen via a future update. You can always
restore the original configuration or propagate updates from the default
configuration available in `/usr/etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo`.

[countme]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DNF_Better_Counting
[libdnfissue]: https://github.com/rpm-software-management/libdnf/issues/1174