Hi everyone,

I am trying to get a cyberJack smartcard reader working on my Slackware64-13.37 host and in a VirtualBox Win7 guest system.

What are the pre-requisites on the Slackware (host) side?
What non-stock software is required in order to get the smartcard reader working?
Finally, how do I enable the Win7 guest to use the device?

There is a Linux driver, that I compiled from source. After that, the device was identified correctly, when I plugged it to my computer, and VirtualBox "saw" it, also, but I was unable to do anything with it. Installing the Windows drivers in the guest didn't have any effect. While the VM "knows" the device by its name, even a dedicated "redirection filter" didn't help the guest. The Win7 guest still doesn't see the card reader.

On the host, I installed pcscd and some other packages related to card readers, such as (g)scriptor (part of another package), and now I can connect the card reader to my Slackware64 system and read out the contents of smartcards. No success on the guest, though, up to now.

I have researched the web for days, now, and found lots of information, but nothing helped. Seems, I have to narrow my queries, but in order to do so I need to better understand what's going on. BTW, one post I found suggested to install PAM, but as far as I recall it, PAM is included already with Slackware64-13.37, right?

Thanks for any hint pointing me into the right direction!

gargamel

@gargamel

I think you need to add the user using Virtualbox to the group vboxusers .

And make sure the guest additions is installed on the guest operating system

Regards

Lawrence

Thanks, the installer automatically created the group vboxusers and added the user to it. And the guest additions are installed. So something else must be wrong.

Further suggestions appreciated!

gargamel

Is the card reader on USB? If so, did you try following the steps listed in the manual below?

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#idp11184208

Yes to both questions.
The virtual USB 2.0 controller is activated, and a virtual USB device is available in the guest. However, while the VM correctly identifies the cyberJack, the guest only "sees" a generic USB device. And the GUI tool that comes with card reader driver for Win7 doesn't find the connected reader.

gargamel

BTW, the patch for rc.S in this thread Slackware 13.1 and VirtualBox USB didn't help, either.

I guess, I'll decommission my VBox VM including the guest and start this all over.

Coming back to my original post: Do I need all the additional stuff, such as fribid, ccid, coolkey and opensc, that I installed from SBo, or would the cyberJack usually work in unmodified stock Slackware64-13.37? And as I am a newbie in the area of smartcards etc.: How would I reliably check this, and what programs are there in stock Slackware that can make use of a card reader?

Thanks, everyone!

gargamel

Hi folks,

as it turns out, a library is missing or not found by the smartcard driver: ctapi-cyberjack.so.
I've searched the web for that library and, indeed, found a source package and found libchipcard and a package ctapi-cyberjack-3.0.6rc4.tar.gz.

But even that didn't help. src2pkg fails to compile the sources, and complains about missing libraries, such as readline-devel. Now, AFAIK Slackware packages comprise 'user' and 'developer' stuff, and therefore contain in one package, what other distros split into two, readline and readline-devel in this case. Correct? And readline is, of course, installed.

The smartcard reader is 'seen' by udev and can be 'connected' with gscriptor (part of the package pcsc-tools available at SBo). But that's it.

I've seen a few reports that the Reiner-SCT driver is a 32-bit driver, but my system currently is purely 64-bit. Maybe that is one cause for the trouble, but I am by no means certain.

I think, this is where the research ends. Before I try to get these things working in what I call a multi-level virtualisation environment, I should make sure, that the card reader is functional on the native Slackware system.

Therefore I'll close this thread, and create a new one, with a clearer focus on a simpler scenario.

Thanks anyway,

gargamel