______       _____            _____      __________ 
___  /_________  /______________  /_________  /__(_)
__  //_/  __ \  __/_  __ \  _ \  __/  ___/_  /__  / 
_  ,<  / /_/ / /_ _  / / /  __/ /_ / /__ _  / _  /  
/_/|_| \____/\__/ /_/ /_/\___/\__/ \___/ /_/  /_/   
                                                    

KotNet Command Line Interface -- An easy automated way to log in to KotNet.

Purpose

Logging in on KotNet is a hassle. A method to autologin from within the browser exists, but although this way of logging in is very user-friendly, it also has some downsides:

• The login speed is suboptimal as the webbrowser has to draw the website elements on the screen;
• You can't use a custom start page because KotNet will always redirect you to netlogin.kuleuven.be when trying to open your custom start page;
• You have to first open a web browser before being able to do internet- related stuff.

kotnetcli tries to overcome this. Its downsides, compared to the browser extension, are:

• No support for KU Leuven authentication portals. For example, if you want to log in on Toledo, you'll still have to enter your credentials there.
• There is no GUI method for changing your username/password combination.

Of course, you can use both kotnetloginextension and kotnetcli. For example, you can set kotnetcli to autologin at boot-time, so netlogin.kuleuven.be won't bother you when opening your web browser. When you go to Toledo, kotnetloginextension will do the login work.

Although ease-of-use is important, kotnetcli will probably stay "poweruser-ish" for a while.

You can find more information about the kotnecli features in the wiki!

Installation

You can either install the dependencies and run the python file, or just download the binary. The general steps to get the latest kotnetcli.py are listed below. Currently, we only support Linux and Windows (x86). If you decide to download the binary, skip steps 1 and 2.

1. Resolve the dependencies: see the next section for an overview and platform-specific instructions

2. Clone this repository and change the directory:

    $ git clone https://github.com/GijsTimmers/kotnetcli.git
    $ cd kotnetcli
   

3. Mark kotnetcli.py as executable:

    $ chmod +x kotnetcli.py
   

4. Run kotnetcli.py:

    $ ./kotnetcli.py
   

When run for the first time, kotnetcli will ask you to unlock your keyring. For maximum ease-of-use, just enter the password you use to login to your system. If you do that, this keyring will only pop up once. After that, you'll have to enter your KotNet s-number or r-number and password. Both will be stored safely in the keyring of your desktop environment.

You can add kotnetcli to your autostart programs to log in to Kotnet at boot-time.

Platform dependent instructions

This section lists the platform specific instructions to resolve the above dependencies:

• Ubuntu:

  $ sudo apt-get install python-pip
  $ sudo pip install mechanize keyring notify2 \
    colorama python2-pythondialog beautifulsoup4
  

• Arch:

  $ sudo pacman -S python2-pip
  $ sudo pip install mechanize keyring notify2 \
    colorama python2-pythondialog beautifulsoup4
  

• Mac OS X (using Homebrew):

  $ brew install ncurses
  $ brew install homebrew/python/python-dbus
  $ sudo pip install mechanize keyring notify2 \
    colorama python2-pythondialog beautifulsoup4
  

• Pip:

  $ sudo pip install mechanize keyring notify2 \
    colorama python2-pythondialog beautifulsoup4
  

Why do we need these dependencies?