Posts tagged #python

Raspberry Pi OPNsense Captive Portal Voucher Generation

When I received my new HP/Aruba iAP-305-RW access points I started to think about introducing a wireless guest network. Not a network with a pre-shared key, but something more secure and flexible. The HP/Aruba AP’s have the option for captive portal, but it doesn’t have a good integration with ACME/Let’s Encrypt certificates. My OPNsense firewall has very good integration with ACME/Let’s Encypt, and has the option of deploying a Captive Portal.

Configuring the Captive Portal on the OPNsense firewall is pretty straightforward. It’s well documented, and is up-and-running in minutes. The main challenge was creating a way to supply the credentials to the users. The default option is to generate voucher codes and print them. Not really an option, since I loose those pieces of paper before I even printed them.

The newer OPNsense software has a decent API, which also includes API options for captive portal. This opened up an option including a Raspberry Pi.

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Posted on July 19, 2023 by Willem and filed under Programming, Raspberry Pi, Security, Gadgets and tagged opnsense raspberry pi captive portal python api.

Installing Python Matplotlib On MacOS Sierra

I recently 'upgraded' to MacOS Sierra (Apple's latest Operating System) by doing a clean install. This resulted in a couple of challenges, including some software that could not be installed, and for which I had to find some alternatives.

Another issue I ran into is that some Python3 scripts with matplotlib wouldn't run, because matplotlib wouldn't install correctly.
I could 'pip' all I wanted, but the result was always:

$ pip3 install matplotlib
[...]
The following required packages can not be built: freetype

Some googling pointed me to some articles that freetype is/was a part of the XQuartz (X11) software that's no longer (pre)installed on MacOS Sierra. And in the past I have always upgraded my OS. The times that I did a clean install on this machine.... Must have been ages ago.

After some frustrating hours of trying to get this 'freetype' thing installed, I ran into an article on yantonov.com which solved my issue finally.

First I installed 'homebrew'.

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

After that I installed pkg-config and freetype:

$ brew install pkg-config
[...]

$ brew install freetype
[...]

And finally, I was able to successfully install matplotlib:

$ pip3 install matplotlib
Posted on January 11, 2017 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Apple, Operating Systems, Programming, Tips'n Tricks and tagged matplotlib homebrew brew freetype MacOS Sierra python.