You can create custom date and time strings relative to "now" with the [Time Source] Authentication Source. This was useful recently when I needed to customise the expiration of MAC caching on Guest devices. 

Instead of having the MAC Caching last until the Guest Account expired, or a day or week from now I wanted the caching to last until midnight of the current day. Here is how I achieved it.

In the ClearPass Guest Authentication with MAC Caching template an attribute is written to the endpoint called "MAC-Auth Expiry". The value of the caching duration is derived in the MAC Caching Settings tab of the service template configuration wizard. By default it would be set to the Account Expiry Time using %{Authorization:[Guest User Repository]:ExpireTime} in the MAC Caching enforcement profile. to edit.

Note: I have used the prefix "deleteme" when using the Service Template so that I remember do remove the components it creates for this demonstration.

The value of Expire Time is extracted from the Guest User Repository so that it matches the Guest Account expiration when written to the Endpoint attribute.

​The variable changes somewhat if you set the expiration to One Day or One Week however. Instead of pulling information from the Guest User Repository it instead uses the Time Source, which is a based on a SQL query.

​"One Week DT" is just one of the options available by default as part of the default Time Source configuration.  It references the following SQL query which pulls the current time rounded to the hour and adds 1 week.

​There are various other examples built in to the time source such as Now DT, One Day DT, One Month DT and Six Months DT. These all display in a clear to read Date-Time format of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. There are various other aliases that return an integer value relative to Epoch. I am less interested in calculating the time from a number so I will focus on the more readable form.

​To create a variable which would return my desired result I added an additional filter to the Time Source. This is found in the ClearPass Policy Manager under Configuration --> Authentication --> Sources. 

I called the Filter "Today at Midnight" and used the following Filter Query:

​This query rounds the date-time to the current day and the time component is represented as 00:00:00. It then adds 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds resulting in data in the form of YYYY-MM-DD 23:59:59 (where YYYY-MM-DD is the current day). I then referenced tonight with the Alias Name of "Tonight DT" so I can use that in my Enforcement Profile variable.

​Save the filter and the Time Source. 
Now go to Enforcement --> Profiles and find your Guest MAC Caching profile for your service.
In the Attributes tab of the profile edit the Endpoint Attribute Value for the MAC-Auth Expiry so that it uses the new Time Source variable.

When a Guest successfully authenticates the Guest MAC Caching enforcement profile is called by the "User Authentication with MAC Caching Enforcement Policy". You will see it as one of the multitude of Actions taken.

The "MAC Authentication Role Mapping" policy (as created by the service template) is referenced by the "MAC Authentication Enforcement Policy". Notice in the first condition which defines the TIPS Role of {MAC Caching] checks the Endpoint MAC-Auth Expiry attribute and ensures that the present time is less than it.

​Now DT actually is rounded to the hour if you inspect the SQL query. I found this out when I was testing and had used an expiration of 5 minutes from now by using the following SQL query. Because of this, Now DT would not be granular enough if you needed expiration to occur in periods shorter than one hour and may require some further modification. There are possibly better ways to attack such a scenario however. Because "Now DT" will not be less than %{Endpoint:MAC-Auth-Expiry} at precisely midnight this works as expected.

The result of all of this is that upon subsequent MAC Authentication requests beyond the first date of connection the device is presented with a Captive Portal. In my use case this was a customised web-login page which required the username to be entered to resume the session. This would occur all the way until the Guest Account Expiration disables the account (which could be weeks, months or longer in to the future).

Let me know if this helps you out by commenting below or sharing in your social feeds.

This article covers a very specific case when you are importing a certificate and private key pair where the private key does not have a password. It does not explain the certificate types or use cases, certificate and key-file file formats or detail the intricacies of PKI.

ClearPass requires certificates in order to operate securely (encrypt/decrypt traffic) and identify itself during RADIUS transactions. The most common certificates you would import are RADIUS, HTTPS and RadSec. There are others but these all require a private key.

ClearPass allows you to import the certificate and private key as two separate files (you can also import them as a combined file). 

It is quite common to receive a private key file that is not protected by a password, whether it be from a public certificate authority or an internal CA service. When you try to import this file pair into ClearPass while leaving the "Private Key Password" field blank you will receive an error:

The error states that the Private Key Password must be specified. The problem is there isn't one to be entered, so it can be confusing how you may proceed.

You can get around this error by entering anything (I haven't exhaustively tested every possible entry) into the Private Key Password field. 

During my first attempt I used "null", which worked. Then I used "asdf" which also worked. A simple, single character entry also appeared to work fine.

When using phone numbers in ClearPass guest self-registration, the system elevates US and UK to the top of the ​country codes selector by default. This isn't always suitable so you may want to change the country codes that are promoted to the top to be more appropriate for your user base.

Generally this will come up when you are building a Guest Self-Registration workflow - but it may be relevant for any page which shows a phone number field in a ClearPass form.

It is possible to edit the settings of the most commonly used visitor_phone Base Field. This should result in an update across all Forms which use this Field.

This can be done from the ClearPass Guest Configuration page.

1. Go to Pages --> Fields
2. Select the visitor_phone field (which is close to the bottom of the list when alphabetically sorted)
3. Click Edit
4. Scroll down to the Preferred Countries property
5. Add the appropriate two character country code or codes (multiple country codes can be entered using a comma between each)
6. Click Save Changes

It is possible to edit this field on a per form basis so that portals and pages can have differing preferred country codes. This may be appropriate for ClearPass deployments that cater to global or multi-national use-cases.

So you've just had a contractor install 173 Access Points! Congrats! But, they haven't taken note of which one is where, nor did you create a table to show them which specific unit belongs in which location. Bummer dude! The problem with not knowing where each AP is is that you can't make finer adjustments of the system and troubleshooting location specific issues can be a nightmare.

There's an app for this problem... Well, maybe an API... 

Aruba Access Points have a function where each Access Point can advertise it's hostname in the beacon. It's still a manual job to go around and find each one with a survey tool or something like Wi-Fi Explorer, but it makes it easier than searching BSSIDs!

To enable this handy feature on an Instant AP (or cluster) you can use the Command Line Interface (CLI). 
Go to the specific WLAN context and use the "advertise-ap-name" command.

If you're using Aruba Central then you can't adjust the AP config via CLI. So you can use the API! For this particular feature (as of the date this is published) there is no specifically targeted API. You can use the AP Configuration API called "Replace AP configuration". With this essentially you are replacing the entire CLI for the Group or Swarm within a group. You can retrieve the existing CLI using "Get AP configuration", make your adjustments to include "advertise-ap-name" in the appropriate locations (for one fo the SSID profiles in the configuration) and then push it back to the AP using "Replace AP configuration".

The specific use of the API is outside of the context of this blog post!
Now go find an installer who documents their work!

ArubaOS (AOS) is the wireless LAN operating system for Aruba Instant Access Points and Wireless Gateways / Controllers. In AOS 8 you can use the following commands on a Mobility Controller (or a managed device, managed by a Mobility Master) to help troubleshoot various problems you may face with Access Points or Wi-Fi stations/clients.

These commands will need to be used directly on the controller (not the Mobility Master). You can jump to the controller by using the command mdc from within the Mobility Master (MM) CLI. First jump to the controller node-level with cd </md/node-hierarchy-path> so you are operating within the context of a particular managed node (controller/gateway/managed device). I prefer and recommend using this method over opening a direct SSH session to the single controller.

Take a look at the ap-debug statistics for a particular Access Points (AP). Look for Heartbeats, Interface counters, ARP cache Interface info, AP uptime, Ethernet Duplex/Speed, LMS info.

Check for high number of reboots or bootstraps (when the GRE keep-alive is missed). 

It might be worth checking the AP system Profile for the “Bootstrap Threshold”. The current default is 8. If it is not specified in the config then its 8.

​If your clients experiences issues there are commands to target statistics and logs specific to a station.

​Look for tx/rx frames and data (if its incrementing then that’s positive), dropped frames, success vs retry.

​Within the AP you can look at radio stats also. ​Look for radio resets, tx power changes, channel changes, noise floor, data drops and CRC errors increasing…

​ARM history for the AP:

​Show clients associated to a particular AP: