The mailing list for users of the eduroam Configuration Assistant Tool (CAT)

[Tomasz Wolniewicz <twoln AT umk.pl>]

Hi Steve,
W dniu 2014-06-05 00:56, Steve Bohrer pisze:
> Is it possible to automatically download versions of CAT for our institution 
> for various OSes? Or is the preferred use that we have all our users directly 
> connect to the cat.eduroam.org page?
We prefer users to connect directly., but if you want to update things 
regularly then you will be safe as well.

Yes there is a link, however it is currently not documented and is going 
to change in release 1.1 when a full User API will be provided.
The current magic link is:

https://cat.eduroam.org/download.php?idp=337&profile=487&generatedfor=user&device=apple_lion

where you need to find out your profile and idp numbers from links on your 
admin interface. Just go to your Identity Provider overview in CAT and take a 
look at the links below the QR codes next to the profiles. You also need to 
find out the device names. (If you play with 
https://cat.eduroam.org/basic.php then you will be able to uncover the names, 
but we will prepare proper instructions for 1.1).

> Currently, we have a local “instructions-for-eduroam” SSID for our new users 
> before they’ve managed to connect, and this SSID does not allow them general 
> internet access. Instead, our instructions site has local copies of the CAT 
> tools for our institution that we’ve downloaded from cat.eduroam.org for each 
> supported OS.
>
> This works, but, updating these local copies from your site is a manual 
> process, as I can’t figure how to get a basic URL for each of a list of CATs, 
> so that I could have our server fetch them from a cron job. Also, the release 
> number of CAT 1.0.4 does not seem to change, but generally (every month or 
> so) when I download copies with my browser to check, they test as different 
> from our existing versions, though it is not clear when they changed.
The release number of CAT is not reflected in the installer names, this 
would seem too confusing for users, I think. The release number as 
displayed on the CAT page does reflect the actual release, however very 
rarely there have been minor hot fixes which did not change the version 
number (possibly we should add a hotfix code in such cases in the future).

Normally the compilers are cached once generated, and will change only 
in these cases:
1. when the local admin applies any changes to the profile in CAT,
2. when a hotfix requiring installer regeneration has been applied,
3. when eduroam OT clears the installer cache for some other reason.
The installers are generated on the fly (unless already generated and 
cached).
> It would be handy for us if there was a way to generate a URL to fetch each 
> version of our CATs.
So you already have that :). In 1.1 you will have another approach but 
the old one will be preserved for compatibility. The new approach will 
be properly documented.
> Alternatively, it would be handy if there was some valid “last revised” date 
> for the tools, so that we could monitor that, and update when you make 
> changes.
This one would be a bit harder, at least so it seems at the first glance.
> Or, if you’d really prefer that our users go directly to your page, please 
> let me know that as well. (I realize that this would be beneficial for any 
> eduroam guest users who had not previously connected at their home 
> institution, but I don’t know that there are many of these visiting us.)
Generally we would prefer direct access, if only for download 
statistics. You could provide just this one address from your local 
SSID. But there may be reasons why local provisioning is better.
What might also interest you is that in 1.1 we are adding a feature of 
deleting a reference to the temporary network, so that users's device do 
not automatically reconnect to it in the future. You will just need to 
specify the SSID of such a network.

I wonder of what people will think about SSID 
"instructions-for-eduroam". Strictly speaking this is a violation of 
eduroam copyright. Normally we tell beple not to use names like 
"eduroam-local" etc, but "instructions-for-eduroam" sounds really nice 
and harmless, and at least I would support the usage of it.

Cheers
Tomasz

> Thanks for any suggestions you may have.
>
> Steve Bohrer
> Network Admin, ITS
> Bard College at Simon's Rock
> 413-528-7645

--
Tomasz Wolniewicz
          
twoln AT umk.pl
        http://www.home.umk.pl/~twoln

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