>>>>> "David" == David Corcoran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
David> IBM's Open Card Framework is a Java implementation of the crusade to
David> standardize communication to smart cards. It includes a PC/SC like
David> Resource Manager and even fully complies with the PC/SC standards. This
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The way I've read things is that OpenCard has been adapted to work on top of
PC/SC, by emulating a very generic card reader and translating everything into
the PC/SC API.
So, if we had the PC/SC API under linux, we would easily have OpenCard
compatibility. I don't see how this would work the other way round (well,
perhaps with a C interface to the Java API. urg.).
David> could save alot of headache code since it is already implemented and comes
David> with source. Unfortunately, there is the JNI (Java Native Interface) glue
David> that would have to be done until Java supports device communication. I
David> guess my main questions is: Is it worth having interoperability when your
David> JVM takes 20% memory/20% CPU just for a resource manager for your
David> smartcard readers ????? If anyone is interested in looking into the OCF
I am against it. The overhead is pretty large, and the JVM would have to be
running all the time (so that card changes are detected, and nobody has a
chance of putting his JVM between a user and the card). If the JVM would be
run like any other daemon, it would be running with uid=root, and I am not
convinced that the linux JVM implementations are ready for this. If we were to
run it on behalf of the user at login time, startup times would slow down
login noticeably. Besides, have a user process authenticate the same user
looks weird.
David> I would be quite interested. This would be a relatively quick fix for
David> a fairly large issue. You can find info at: http://www.opencard.org
Perhaps the underlying structure could be re-used? The exception mechanism
for event handling would have to be changed (signals?), I wouldn't want to use
C++ exceptions here either, since most of the targeted programs (login/PAM)
are plain C.
Jan
***************************************************************
Linux Smart Card Developers - M.U.S.C.L.E.
(Movement for the Use of Smart Cards in a Linux Environment)
http://www.linuxnet.com/smartcard/index.html
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