thanks for the tip but I have no spaces here, so I'm still in the dark..
from gnome import gconf import socket, httplib, urllib, base64, htmllib, formatter username = base64.b64decode(gconf.client_get_default().get_string('/apps/maegios/username')) password = base64.b64decode(gconf.client_get_default().get_string('/apps/maegios/password')) base64string = base64.encodestring('%s:%s' % (username, password))[:-1] headers = {"Authorization": "Basic %s" % base64string} socket.setdefaulttimeout(5) url = gconf.client_get_default().get_string('/apps/maegios/url').split('/') connection = httplib.HTTPSConnection(url[2]) connection.request("POST", "/%s/%s" % (url[3], "cgi-bin/status.cgi"), [], headers) response = connection.getresponse() data = response.read() data