Make OPA telemetry opt-in

[sbernauer]

We want to have an opt-in flag at our OpaClusters that controls
--disable-telemetry disables anonymous information reporting (see: https://www.openpolicyagent.org/docs/latest/privacy)

[NickLarsenNZ]

Should that be an opt-in thing? I can imagine most want to disable telemetry, but perhaps some want to enable it?

[sbernauer]

Yeah, it should be an opt-in thing. We would need to add a CRD field and read that I guess. Changing the Issue to reflect that

[lfrancke]

I think we should just disable by default and have people use a config override for that.

Is that possible in this case?

[sbernauer]

That's exactly what this Ticket wants. It's currently not possible to activate it, as we hard-code the start command

[lfrancke]

Sorry, I will clarify.

We would need to add a CRD field and read that I guess.

I think we should not add a CRD field for this if it is possible to set this using a config override.
Default: Telemetry disabled, can be enabled using config override (not a CRD field)

[sbernauer]

Ah I see. https://www.openpolicyagent.org/docs/latest/privacy/ only mentions the CLI flag, but there might also be a config setting.

[NickLarsenNZ]

Yeah, I dug through code and it doesn't look like there is a companion ENV var for it.

So if we explicitly disable it, and if someone really wants to enable, would they have to override the whole command? Or would we make an env var they can set to enable it and then adjust the command line based on it?

[sbernauer]

https://github.com/stackabletech/opa-operator/blob/d3ad0da6ad4178b2ab79f449091a9fa2cbb000ab/rust/operator-binary/src/controller.rs#L864C15-L864C15 adds the parameter unconditional to the start command. You could (in theory) overwrite it with podOverrides but that's pain in the ***.
IMHO we should add a field such as spec.clusterConfig.telemetryEnabled which defaults to false and add --disable-telemetry conditionally.

[lfrancke]

Ah! So do I understand this correctly that telemetry is already disabled now?

The PR says "Closes" this one but this one is not closed.

I assume this one is now about making it possible to enable telemetry again?

[sbernauer]

Ah! So do I understand this correctly that telemetry is already disabled now?

Yes, you are right. Originally this issues was "Disable telemetry", PR did so and closed this Issue.

Than @NickLarsenNZ had the request, that users should be able to opt in, and we re-opened the ticket changed it to reflect the new requirements

[lfrancke]

Thank you!