Introduction
PC/SC standard
PC/SC is the de-facto standard to interface Personal Computers with Smart Cards (and smartcard readers of course). Even if PC/SC has been initialy promoted by Microsoft -and has been implemented for long in Windows-, the standard is not limited to MS' operating systems.
PCSC-Lite is an open source implementation of PC/SC, part of a global project named MUSCLE (Movement for the Use of Smart Cards in a Linux Environment). Despite its name, the PC/SC stack offered by MUSCLE is not limited to GNU/Linux anymore. Their compatibility list now includes other popular UNIXes, including Apple Mac OS X and Solaris.
CCID standard
The USB CCID specification from the USB working group aims to normalize USB smartcard readers, in order to have a single driver (supplied once for all with the operating system) for virtually any reader from any manufacturer.
PCSC-Lite project includes an open source CCID driver. This driver has been tested with SpringCard CSB6 on GNU/Linux, and should work on the other operating systems targetted by the project.
Disclaimer and warning
There's no relationship between SpringCard and the developers involved in the open source PCSC-Lite project.
Apart from this explanation page, SpringCard can't provide any technical support related to PCSC-Lite middleware nor PCSC-Lite CCID driver.
CSB6 Family on GNU/Linux
In this part we're going to install PCSC-Lite and CSB6's drivers on Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy). Some parts of the procedure may vary a little, depending on the GNU/Linux distribution you're working with.
Do not connect the device to your computer now ! You must download and install the driver before connecting the product.
Download
Go to pcsclite.alioth.debian.org to download both PCSC-Lite and its CCID Driver :
- PCSC-Lite : file named pcsc-lite-x.y.z.tar.bz2, "x.y.z" being the version number,
- CCID driver : file named ccid-x.y.z.tar.bz2, "x.y.z" being the version number.
Installation
Connect as root.
Uncompress both archives.
N.B. : On Ubuntu (and on some other Linuxes), connecting as root is not possible. In this case, one must prefix every command by "sudo", to gain root's priviledges temporary.
Installing PCSC-Lite
Open a terminal and go to the directory where you have uncompressed the PCSC-Lite archive. Enter the commands :
./configure
make
make install
Troubleshooting
If the configure step fails with message error: usb.h not found, use ./configure LIBUSB_CFLAGS=..., maybe you don't have the libusb library installed ?
If so, download and install the complete library (libusb.sourceforge.net) before retrying the installation of PCSC-Lite.
On Ubuntu or Debian, you may use apt-get to download and install the libusb-dev package :
apt-get install libusb-dev.
Installing CCID driver
Open a terminal and go to the directory where you have uncompressed the CCID Driver archive. Enter the commands :
./configure
make
make install
Enabling PCSC-Lite daemon
PCSC-Lite's pcscd process must be running in the background.
Starting pcscd manually
Open a terminal and go to the directory where PCSC-Lite has been installed. Typically, this is /usr/local/sbin/pcscd.
In this directory, enter the command ./pcscd.
Configuring pcscd to be launched on startup
It is better to have pcscd automatically started when the computer starts. To do so, you must add pcscd in the list of processes started in rc.local or equivalent startup script.
Connecting the device
Plug the device onto an unused USB connector.
In a terminal, use the command lsusb to verify device's information.
In the above screenshot, we have a CSB6 connected : Vendor ID=0x1C34 (Pro Active and SpringCard), Product ID=0x7124 (CSB6 Ultimate, PC/SC mode). Other devices will have different ProductIDs ; all products in the CSB6 PC/SC family have a ProductID in the 0x7100 to 0x71FF range.
Validating the installation
To test the newly installed reader, we'll use gscriptor, an open source PERL software, able to exchange APDUs with smartcards through the PCSC-Lite stack.
Installing PCSC-Perl
Go to ludovic.rousseau.free.fr/softwares/pcsc-perl and download pcsc-perl-x.y.z.tar.gz, "x.y.z" being the version number.
Uncompress the archive. Install the package as follow :
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install
Using gscriptor
Go to ludovic.rousseau.free.fr/softwares/pcsc-tools and download pcsc-tools-x.y.z.tar.gz, "x.y.z" being the version number.
Uncompress the archive. Launch the gscriptor program.
Card connect
- Select the contactless slot of your CSB6 reader (usually the first reader in the the list),
- Put any compliant contactless card on the reader,
- Connect to the card (Reader -> Connect).
APDU exchange
Write the APDU command in the script panel. You may use the command FFCA000000 as a test.
Click Run. Observe card's response in the result panel.
Well, in this test this not actually a response from the card... The command FFCA000000 is interpreted by
the reader (CLA=FF is reserved for the embedded APDU interpreter), so it is the reader that actually answers. The returned
data are the serial number of the contactless card. Remember, we've put any contactless card on the reader, and
querying the serial number is more or less the only command that will run on every card...
Troubleshooting
If invoking gscriptor fails with message Can't locate Chipcard/PCSC.pm, re-install PCSC-Perl and/or verify PERL's include directories.
CSB6 Family on Mac OS X
Starting with MacOS X version 10.4, the PCSC-Lite package and the CCID driver are included in the system. We just need to add entries for SpringCard readers into the configuration file of the CCID driver to have them supported.
Configuring CCID driver to support our readers
Open CCID driver's Info.plist
Open a Terminal window and enter this command :
sudo
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
/usr/libexec/SmartCardServices/drivers/ifd-ccid.bundle/Contents/Info.plist
Note : the command has been splited into 3 lines for the ease of reading. You must enter it at once, with only a single <Enter> at the end, after Info.plist
Enter your password if prompted to do so.
Add SpringCard's USB Vendor ID
- Scroll down, locate the block beginning by <key>ifdVendorID</key>,
- Scroll down until you reach the end of the block,
- Add 7 occurences of the line
<string>0x1C34</string>.
Note : We need to add our Vendor ID 7 times, because we are to support 7 different Product IDs.
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Add the Product IDs of SpringCard's readers
- Scroll down, locate the block beginning by <key>ifdProductID</key>,
- Scroll down until you reach the end of the block,
- Add the following lines :
<string>0x7113</string>
<string>0x7121</string>
<string>0x7123</string>
<string>0x7124</string>
<string>0x7136</string>
<string>0x7138</string>
<string>0x7141</string>
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Add the names of SpringCard's readers
- Scroll down, locate the block beginning by <key>ifdFriendlyName</key>,
- Scroll down until you reach the end of the block,
- Add the following lines :
<string>CrazyWriter</string>
<string>CSB6 Basic</string>
<string>CSB6 Secure</string>
<string>CSB6 Ultimate</string>
<string>EasyFinger Standard</string>
<string>EasyFinger Ultimate</string>
<string>Prox'N'Roll</string>
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Save and restart
Save the modified file. Exit TextEdit and restart the computer.
Validation
- Plug the reader onto a computer's USB port,
- Open a Terminal window and enter the command
pcsctest, - pcsctest displays the list of connected readers (in the following snapshots, only one Prox'N'Roll is connected),
- Enter the number of the reader you want to test (in our case, only '1' is allowed).
- Put a card on the reader, and check that everything is running as expected.
