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Solve the following problem using Python, implementing the functions described below, one line at a time
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Description:
 def authentication(self, username, password):
 """Configures the user authentication for eAPI This method configures the username and password combination to use for authenticating to eAPI. Args: username (str):
 The username to use to authenticate the eAPI connection with password (str):
 The password in clear text to use to authenticate the eAPI connection with """

        _auth_text = '{}:{}'.format(username, password)

        # Work around for Python 2.7/3.x compatibility
        if int(sys.version[0]) > 2:
            # For Python 3.x
            _auth_bin = base64.encodebytes(_auth_text.encode())
            _auth = _auth_bin.decode()
            _auth = _auth.replace('\n', '')
            self._auth = _auth
        else:
            # For Python 2.7
            _auth = base64.encodestring(_auth_text)
            self._auth = str(_auth).replace('\n', '')

        _LOGGER.debug('Autentication string is: {}:***'.format(username))