Fellowship Card

SSH failure after card reinsterted

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:24:07 +0100

You may experience problems using ssh after reinserting the card on 64-bit platforms, caused by a unexpected sequence of implicit casts in the C language when assigning aritmetic results to 64-bit variables (or other types larger than an default int).

Up and running

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 03:45:52 +0100

After some tweaking the fellowship card is finally up and running, and my keyring has been adjusted accordingly to have the main signing key in a secret place together with a master encryption key, and three active keys stored on the card.

Once the card reader was running it turned out to not be very complex to get things set up proper. But the key edit / export / import of GnuPG still leaves a bit to desire.. mainly because I chickened out and created the signing and encryption keys locally and then transferred them to the card, leaving backup copies in my main SSH keyring in case the card crashes. If you don't do that things is a bit smoother.

Even SSH works using gpg-agent, but there seems to be some issues with SSH when removing the card causing gpg-agent to need restarting if an SSH operation is attempted while the card is unplugged. As long as no SSH operation is attempted while the card is removed things seem to work better.

Next thing to look into (apart from fixing the card removal problems) is if it's possible to use the card to login. Would be great, but I am not too optimistic..

Linux support for the Todos Argos Mini II card reader

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 03:31:55 +0100

In sweden the Todos Argos Mini II card reader is quite common as it's the recommended card reader for smartcards from several of the major banks. However, this reader is not a CCID reader nor is there a public driver available so some hands-on is required to get the reader working under Linux.