Auto-login to Georgia Tech's LAWN (on-campus wireless network)
Motivation: Logging into LAWN each and every time you use your laptop on the Georgia Tech wireless network is kind of a pain. Shouldn't it be easy to do it automatically? Luckily it is.
Tools used:
cURL
Windows Vista (other OS's should work similarily)
Username/password
Basic knowledge of the command line/batch files
OpenSSL (needed for cURL) (download and install the Windows binaries from here)
Instructions: Install cURL, choosing the appropriate operating system. For whatever reason, I couldn't get a compiled version of wget with SSL to work. Maybe you can... but I suggest using cURL since it worked well for me. Specifically, I used the Win32 Generic, 7.19.5 cURL compiled by Daniel Stenberg.
Next, download the security certificate for the auth.lawn.gatech.edu page, which is available via two ways:
1. Download it here
2. Open up Firefox and go to "https://auth.lawn.gatech.edu" . Next, double-click the lock icon on the bottom status bar of Firefox. Click "View Certificate," then the "Details" tab, and finally "Export..." Save it to the same directory as where you installed cURL (I would suggest naming it "cert.pem" for convenience).
Place this cert.pem file in the same directory as the cURL executable.
Next, open up a command prompt, using Windows button (start button) -> run -> type in "cmd" and press enter in Vista.
Use the following command in the directory in which you installed cURL.
curl -s -f --cacert cert.pem -F output=text -F username=user_name_here -F password=password_here -F iss=true https://auth.lawn.gatech.edu/index.php
where cert.pem is the name of the certificate file you downloaded previously, user_name is your gatech.edu user name, and password_here is your password.
This command will log you in to LAWN if you're not already! Great!
How to create a batch file that will do this all in one click? Easy, open up notepad, and use the following text:
C:\DIRECTORY\PATH\TO\curl\curl.exe -s -f --cacert cert.pem -F output=text -F username=user_name_here -F password=password_here -F iss=true https://auth.lawn.gatech.edu/index.php
pause
You can take out the "pause" if you prefer, although I like it so that I can confirm that it in fact has logged me in (the text "Logging you into lawn..." appears if so). Save the file as "lawn_login.bat" or whatever you prefer, as long as the .bat portion is there. Now all you have to do it double click this file to log yourself into LAWN! Sweet.