Automatic daily login script *Programming Challenge*

[SickFreak]

Hello,
At school I am required to 'muster' electronically each day on the attendance website for the University. Being that I am by nature a distracted person, I often forget to accomplish this task.

Can someone please help me craft a script that will automatically log me in to the server, possibly being run as a cron job or something that I can set and forget? The logistics of the task are as follows:

1. Muster must be completed Monday through Friday.
2. Muster must be completed between 5am and 4pm.
3. Mustering consists of entering a username/password combination to a secure server.

I have a computer on campus that I can access remotely via a shell account and that is operational 24/7.

Any suggestions provided are most appreciated. I am a burgeoning programmer and I am not skilled in the art of writing network interfacing programs.

SickFreq

[simonn]

man wget

Set up a cron job.

[SickFreak]

okay, rtfm, very insightful. Now, for those home gamers out there who are looking for the details of what is going on here, the steps I have tried are as follows:

# wget intrants.school.edu --http-user=my_username -http-passwd=my_password --no-check-certificate

and

# wget intranet.school.edu --http-user=my_username -http-passwd=my_password -secure-protocol=auto

I do know that the school is using a form of SSLvX and I have tried all of those options. I think I need to specify a path to the certificate I have stored on my system but I cannot find where that is. I know that firefox keeps a record of it but can anyone tell me what the path to that certificate is so I can specify it as a part of my login script?

Specifically, I think I need to use the:

--ca-directory=directory

option to access the account, but I don't know what directory to specify. Where are the ssl certs stored and will PEM format work?

Sick

[Firewing1]

IF you look at your Prefs menu, under Sessions, you can set login items. Just make a script, and have it run at login.

[SickFreak]

I have solved this issue, and I am now automatically running a login script to my school.

Here are the steps involved:

1. Edit your /etc/lynx.cfg file. Make the following changes:
ACCEPT_ALL_COOKIES:TRUE
FORCE_SSL_PROMPTES
2. Create a text file with the following contents:

(echo '$username'; echo '$secretpassword'; echo '\33[B') | lynx -term xterm -accept_all_cookies https://school.login.html >> /path/tofile/login_result.txt

Breaking this little script down, what this does is pass in two values to the login as they are requested. The echo '\33[B' is equivalent to a spacebar press I inserted just to test the functionality of the echo. Using lynx, the -term xterm is used to specify the type of terminal used to execute the script. The tag -accept_all_cookies is used to do just that. Then comes the website you desire to login to, and finally a redirected output to a txt file to test the script. If the script runs successfully, you will have a file created with the results of the page you reach after you login.

To top this off, run a cron job that executes at the time you desire to login. I recommend running it often at first to test its functionality, and then just setting it to the time you desire to access the page.

I hope this helps someone subvert the horrors of having to automatically log yourself in to let your employer know you are alive.

SickFreak