Hello,
I am running PureOS/KDE Plasma on my Librem Mini. I wanted to know if I could mask this service without any catastrophic effects: gnss-share.service. I can’t see an essential reason to share my location data. Please advise! Would it be ok to mask gnss-share.service?
The service is started on boot:
– Boot 200557d63ca94634807b3efb4e5cfc60 –
Dec 06 10:00:41 ao gnss-share[574]: Starting GNSS server, accepting connections at: /var/run/gnss-share.sock
Dec 06 10:00:40 ao systemd[1]: Started Manage access to and AGPS on GNSS devices.
Dec 06 10:24:05 ao systemd[1]: Stopping Manage access to and AGPS on GNSS devices…
Dec 06 10:24:05 ao systemd[1]: gnss-share.service: Succeeded.
Dec 06 10:24:05 ao systemd[1]: Stopped Manage access to and AGPS on GNSS devices.
I would not know, but I suggest creating an external backup of any important files first before attempting to perform any experimental actions.
That and make sure you have a Live Boot USB handy.
Where would it be getting location data anyway in order to give it away?
The answer to this will depend on your hardware and your physical location. For example, in a Mini using ethernet, not WiFi, and without GNSS hardware and without a cellular modem … it is arguable that there are no sources of location data anyway.
My guess would be that it would be safe to mask that service.
A “small steps” approach might be to mask it --runtime and see whether anything bad happens. If something bad happens then reboot (one way or another) and the service should come back.
Thanks so much! I like the small steps approach how do I use the runtime flag? It would just by sudo systemctl mask gnss-share --runtime?
Yes, although, per the man page, the --runtime goes before mask. (Testing with another option and another command, within systemctl, suggests that systemctl might not care about the placement of options i.e. works either way. If it were in a shell script, I would do it by the book. For interactive use, whatever works.)