Firefox in Ubuntu : how to automate basic authentication password confirm dialog

Question

I have an Ubuntu workstation with Firefox always open on a (autorefreshing) web page protected by basic auth.

At startup, I have autologin and automatic Firefox start on the page and I have saved the basic auth credentials.

I'd like to confirm in some automated way the username/password dialog box which pops up on the first opening of the page, or I'd like to know if there's any hack to avoid this dialog box.

I tried setting the homepage to http://username%3Apassword@myserver/mypage put that doesn't stop confirmation dialog boxes.

Answer 1

Try xdotool or IronAHK. I haven't used either of them, but they're basically tools for simulating mouse and keyboard events, which sounds like one way of solving your problem.

Edit: See the comments for the exact answer.

Answer 2

For people coming from google:

The easiest way to prevent that annoying popup is to got to "about":config" and add a new integer entry:
Name: network.http.phishy-userpass-length
Value: 255

With this in place you can then use http://username:password@myserver/mypage and there will be no confirmation boxes. More information can be found at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.phishy-userpass-length

Answer 3

There is an automation addon for firefox called iMacros.
I have not used it first hand and cannot vouch it it will help you solve your problem.
You could give it a short try.

Answer 4

PasswordProfiler is protection like this is very weak and a smart user can bypass it easily.

Answer 5

xdotool is really useful! Thanks!

This is my script in Ubuntu Karmic. I have a key combination that launches this code, so I can get really fast to a htaccess password protected site:

#!/bin/bash

#If Firefox is not running, wait 4 seconds to open.       
if [ "$(pidof firefox)" ]
  then
    timetosleep=1
  else
    timetosleep=4
fi

#Launch firefox
firefox http://wiki.example.org &

#Sleep until the window comes up
sleep $timetosleep

#Press enter!
WID=`xdotool search --title Identi`
xdotool windowactivate $WID
xdotool key Return

PD: As my firefox is in spanish I search for "Identificación" instead of "Authentication".