cityu-cp37-keep-online

Login CityU HK CP37 captive portal to keep your host online

Get started

First of all, you need to use the webpage of the CityU HK CP37 captive portal in GUI to login once, because it requires 2FA to login. While logging in, check the option to no longer requiring 2FA for this device, so that for this device you can just use the username and password to login later. The "no 2FA later" mechanism is remembered by the remote SAML server and works until you login your account on another device for the CP37 captive portal, or say the unlocking is per-account-plus-domain.

Then install this package. For Debian/Ubuntu, you can use the DEB package included in releases. For other distributions, you can install this package as a standard Golang project.

And install a Chromium/Chrome browser as a dependency. You can either use the system package manager, e.g., for Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

Or check the official Chromium download page for the documentation.

One more comfirmation to make, which is usually nothing to do, is: You need to make sure the installed systemd service cp37-login.service can find the Chromium/Chrome executable. Check the PATH variable in the systemd service file cp37-login.service.

Finally reload the systemd services and start the timer, which will login every 5 minutes:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now cp37-login.timer

To check the status/logs of the login:

sudo systemctl status cp37-login.service
# Or more detailed logs:
sudo journalctl -u cp37-login.service

Options

All options are set by environment variables. Dotenv is also loaded from the .env file in the working directory. Since the package is installed with systemd daemonization, you can override these environment variables in /etc/default/cp37-login or directly in the systemd service file cp37-login.service.

Env name	Description	Default value or required
CP37_ROD_CTL_URL	rod control URL to connect to a Chromium/Chrome	Defaults to start a new Chromium/Chrome session by rod
CP37_ROD_BIN_PATH	Path to the Chromium/Chrome executable used to get a control URL.	Defaults to lookup PATH. Used after CP37_ROD_CTL_URL.
CP37_CITYU_USERNAME	CityU CP37 captive portal username, which is the same as the AIMS username	Required
CP37_CITYU_PASSWORD	CityU CP37 captive portal password, which is the same as the AIMS password	Required
CP37_LOGIN_TIMEOUT	Timeout in the Golang duration string format for login	Defaults to 30s, which is 30 seconds

License

SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0 OR MIT

Copyright (C) myl7