On Sunday 28 January 2007 12:43, Krister Walfridsson wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2007, Marc Tooley wrote:
> > Okay; so after running what I think was an exhaustive search for
> > information about drivers on NetBSD for any SmartCard device (those
> > credit-card-sized devices with the microprocessors built-in) I
> > thought I'd try one last-ditch run at the mailing list to find out
> > if anyone here has actually gotten smartcards of any sort working
> > under NetBSD.
>
> You should have no problem finding working readers...
>
> Most USB readers developed for general use are using the CCID device
> class [1], and they are usually accessed through the libusb.  So you
> do not need any kernel mode drivers (more than ugen).
>
> Serial and PCMCIA readers usually have very proprietary protocols,
> but there are some readers that have open source drivers [2].  The
> PCMCIA drivers are mostly Linux-only (as they are running in kernel
> mode) but the serial drivers are running in user space and should be
> trivial to get to work on NetBSD too.

Ah, perfect then. This is precisely the kind of information I was after.

> Have you looked at the MUSCLE stuff? [3]

I did at one point, but that was back when my desktops were primarily 
Linux. I was interested in lower-level code than that at the time and 
so I was looking at MUSCLE and then found SOSSE too. It's nice to see 
things have been progressing elsewhere.

> The "correct" framework to use to access smart cards is the PC/SC
> [4]. The PC/SC framework is "built-in" into Windows and OS X (and
> Solaris?) and the implementation consist of a PC/SC manager daemon
> and the drivers are loaded dynamically from shared libraries.
>
> The MUSCLE project implemented a PC/SC manager that is available in
> pkgsrc-wip as wip/pcsc-lite, and you'll find a CCID driver there too
> (as wip/ccid).  The CCID driver did not work on NetBSD last time I
> looked at it, but is should be trivial to fix. (I have been planning
> to fix it and import it in pkgsrc for some time.  I can raise its
> priority on my TODO in case you need to use it...)

Ah! pkgsrc-wip. I knew there was a reason I began syncing up with the 
wip tree. Thank you for the pointer, it's most helpful. Of course 
interesting things would have to be sitting there right under my 
nose. :)

Thanks again,
Marc

>     /Krister
>
> [1] http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs#approved
> [2] http://www.linuxnet.com/sourcedrivers.html
> [3] http://www.linuxnet.com/
> [4] http://www.pcscworkgroup.com/