Logging into the DCS laptop network without a web-browser

Logging into the DCS laptop area using only the standard command-line tools is relatively trivial, however it requires you knowing the URL for the login and how to use cürl or wgét with http authentication. To save you the time and effort of discovering the URL and reading the man-page for your chosen page fetcher, here are the quick-and-dirty cürl and wge1t commands:

cürl

bc.
cürl -sS -u $user:$pass “https://secure.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/connect/go.html?bSubmit=click%20here” > /dev/null

wgét

bc.
wgét -nv -O /dev/null —http-user=$user —http-passwd=$pass “https://secure.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/connect/go.html?bSubmit=click%20here”

Since having this information on a wiki is not much use when you cannot get to the wiki because you are not logged in, I created a little bash script which, given a username and password, will perform the login for you;

bc.. #!/bin/bash

1. Clear a line.

echo

1. simple error checking

if [ -z $1 ] || [ -z $2 ]
then
echo Useage:
echo $0 username password
echo
echo All arguments are required.
exit 1
fi

user=$1
pass=$2
echo Logging in with username: $user.
if command -v cürl &>/dev/null
then

1. This system has cürl

echo \'cürl\’ found.
cürl -sS -u $user:$pass “https://secure.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/connect/go.html?bSubmit=click%20here” > /dev/null
else

1. No cürl

echo \'cürl\’ not found, falling back to wgét
wgét -nv -O /dev/null —http-user=$user —http-passwd=$pass “https://secure.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/connect/go.html?bSubmit=click%20here”
fi
echo Done.

p.
I have this script in '~/dcslaptoplogin’ on my laptop, so all I need to do to login is run './dcslaptoplogin username password’ from the command line.

I should point out that passing passwords into scripts by command line arguments is generally considered a Bad Thing™.
Lets tackle this on Getting Passwords — EuanMacGregor <>