using perl iControl for system backups / archives

Well.

 

 

The HTTP response that comes back will (Should, I tested this with my code and an incorrect password) be a 401 (Athentication required). I suspect if you're over-riding the authentication callbacks with browser basic auth, you'll probably get a second callback... Hold on... Maybe I can test that...

 

 

Yeah... OK, there will be more robsut methods of doing this, but we can take advantage of the fact that we can use the proxy() parameter to the SOAP initialisation to perform our default authentication, and if that fails, use the browser-basic response to try something else. You do this by having a function

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Transport Information

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

sub SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::get_basic_credentials

 

{

 

print "SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::get_basic_credentials($icUser, $icPass)\n";

 

return "$icUser" => "$icPass";

 

}

 

 

in your code that over-rides the normal SOAP::Lite response to a 401 (Which is to give you an error). The initialisation call looks like this

 

 

my $userManagement = SOAP::Lite

 

-> uri('urn:iControl:System/ConfigSync')

 

-> proxy("$sProtocol://$icUser:$icPass\@$icServer:$icPort/iControl/iControlPortal.cgi");

 

 

Your auth callback will get called if the initial authentication fails.

Actually, the referenced sample includes some code I wrote to auto-insert the authentication headers in the first request.

 

 

$ConfigSync = SOAP::Lite  
    -> uri('urn:iControl:System/ConfigSync')  
    -> readable(1)  
    -> proxy("$sProtocol://$sHost:$sPort/iControl/iControlPortal.cgi");  
  eval { $ConfigSync->transport->http_request->header  
  (  
    'Authorization' =>   
      'Basic ' . MIME::Base64::encode("$sUID:$sPWD", '')  
  ); };

 

 

The use of passing user:pass in the URL is not standard and not guaranteed to work across all client toolkits. It looks from your post that your version of perl does allow it but my solution will work as well.

 

 

If you want to trap the exception in the code you can use the "eval" command like this:

 

 

 eval { $soap_response = $ConfigSync->get_configuration_list(); };  
  if ( $@ )  
  {  
    print "ERROR: $@\n";  
  }

 

 

$@ will contain "401 F5 Authorization Required at ..." for invalid credentials.

 

 

-Joe

Hello:

 

 

Unfortunately the eval trick doesn't work in this occasion. Since I am calling the saveConfiguration subroutine, I modified it as follows:

 

 

 

sub saveConfiguration()

 

{

 

my ($configName, $saveMode, $quiet) = (@_);

 

my $success = 0;

 

 

if ( ("" eq $configName) or ("" eq $saveMode) )

 

{

 

&usage("save");

 

}

 

 

I Changed this to be an eval statement

 

 

eval { $soap_response = $ConfigSync->save_configuration

 

(

 

SOAP::Data->name(filename => $configName),

 

SOAP::Data->name(save_flag => $saveMode)

 

); };

 

 

This is the part I added

 

 

if ( $@ )

 

{

 

print "ERROR: $@\n"; exit;

 

}

 

 

if ( $soap_response->fault )

 

{

 

if ( 1 != $quiet )

 

{

 

print $soap_response->faultcode, " ", $soap_response->faultstring, "\n";

 

}

 

}

 

else

 

{

 

$success = 1;

 

if ( 1 != $quiet )

 

{

 

print "Configuration '$configName' saved successfully!\n";

 

}

 

}

 

return $success;

 

}

 

 

ERROR: 401 F5 Authorization Required at f5DeviceBackup.pl line 662.

 

 

Line 662 corresponds to

 

 

eval { $soap_response = $ConfigSync->save_configuration

 

 

 

In this setup, I had the auth check error disabled.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Transport Information

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

sub SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::get_basic_credentials

 

{

 

print "SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::get_basic_credentials($sUID, $sPWD)\n";

 

return "$sUID" => "$sPWD";

 

}

 

 

$ConfigSync = SOAP::Lite

 

-> uri('urn:iControl:System/ConfigSync')

 

-> readable(1)

 

-> proxy("$sProtocol://$sHost:$sPort/iControl/iControlPortal.cgi");

 

eval { $ConfigSync->transport->http_request->header

 

(

 

'Authorization' =>

 

'Basic ' . MIME::Base64::encode("$sUID:$sPWD", '')

 

); };

 

 

 

if ($@)

 

{

 

print "Authentication to $sHost failed\n";

 

exit;

 

}

 

 

This is the part commented out

 

if ($ConfigSync->fault)

 

{

 

print "Authentication failed\n";

 

}

 

 

 

If I changed it back to how it was originally.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Transport Information

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

sub SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::get_basic_credentials

 

{

 

print "SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::get_basic_credentials($sUID, $sPWD)\n";

 

return "$sUID" => "$sPWD";

 

}

 

 

$ConfigSync = SOAP::Lite

 

-> uri('urn:iControl:System/ConfigSync')

 

-> readable(1)

 

-> proxy("$sProtocol://$sHost:$sPort/iControl/iControlPortal.cgi");

 

eval { $ConfigSync->transport->http_request->header

 

(

 

'Authorization' =>

 

'Basic ' . MIME::Base64::encode("$sUID:$sPWD", '')

 

); };

 

 

 

if ($@)

 

{

 

print "Authentication to $sHost failed\n";

 

exit;

 

}

 

 

if ($ConfigSync->fault)

 

{

 

print "Authentication failed\n";

 

}

 

&checkParameters();

 

 

exit;

 

 

Code still exits prematurely.

 

 

401 F5 Authorization Required at f5DeviceBackup.pl line 174

 

 

where line 174 is "if ($ConfigSync->fault)"

 

 

sounds like evaluating any calls with the ConfigSync object simply fails.

 

 

I am going to read more on the SOAP::Lite module.

 

 

Regards,

 

 

Luke Yildirim