Comment 3 for bug 1037599

The checkbox fingerprint is a requirement from Launchpad when uploading submissions. It is a coarse attempt to identify models using an md5sum of chassis information from your system. You can generate this hash from the command line to see how it works:

  $ export PATH=/usr/share/checkbox/scripts:$PATH
  $ run_templates -st "sudo /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/dmi_resource | filter_templates -w 'category=CHASSIS'" <<'EOF' | tr -d '\n' | md5sum
  Computerunknown$vendor$model
  EOF

This information is only provided for historical reasons, it was never really used. For your reassurance, Launchpad submissions are also used by the Ubuntu Friendly programme which can still identify unique models independently of the fingerprint:

  https://friendly.ubuntu.com

It is unfortunate that this may cause confusion in the Launchpad web interface but it is so rarely used that there's little motivation to do anything about it.

In principle, the fingerprint should be generated on the server side so that it can be refined as new hardware appears on the market, like ARM hardware might not have chassis information. Since this is not likely to be implemented, I will have to set this bug to Won't Fix.