Authentication added.

New firmware version 1.3.9 has been just released. It includes few minor improvements, and as main new feature an authentication, that was added to web interface.  How it works is pictured on right side. Every new client connection is asked for user and password that must match with internal values. Default user is: admin, and default password is: pass. Both then can be changed in Settings.

At first I was thinking to use obsolete HTTP basic authentication, to make it simple. But it is very obsolete, and also not supported by vanilla HTTPD from lwip contrib package. I was thinking how to add an authentication for a longer time. There are several methods to be used. First would be creating a single page application with authentication message encrypted in URL as parameters. Witch would require a bigger re-work on the HTML page generation. Now HTTPD has several pages, on which user can set tens of options for each section on a page. Quite a difficult task.  Second, to use a cookie to store some secret after user authenticate successfully on browser side, and request the browser to send this secret with each request. But lwip's HTTPD does not support cookies. 

Well I deiced for second option. I created a simple patch to HTTPD  to handle cookie generation and reception. First is done as part of dynamic header option for pages that are not statically liked, that is not generated via makefsdata program. Then, I added an additional callback, that is preceding request for every fs_open (file system open function). This allows an application to verify received cookie and then, if needed, rewrite the page( or file) requested to something else, for example login page.

I think it is nice and neat addition to lwip's HTTPD, so I will try to push it upstream, hoping it will get accepted.

New pre-compiled version is as always available GitHub, together with all sources. Enjoy!

P.S. Finally this is new version for my "production" home gateway. Resetting it after 163 days. Quite satisfied 💪