How to use the FSFE smartcard for logging on to your system.

I used the PAM module named poldi, which is part of GPG. On Ubuntu based systems, you can install the package libpam-poldi.

You then need to replace the 'auth' lines in any files in /etc/pam.d/ for which you'd like to authenticate against the smartcard (i.e. /etc/pam.d/kdm for the KDM login manager) with 'auth required pam_poldi.so quiet' (without the quotes).

Then, if it doesn't already exist, create the file /etc/poldi/poldi.conf, and add the line:

wait-timeout 3

To make poldi time-out after 3 seconds if no card is present.
You can test that this is working using:

$ poldi-ctrl --test

...with no card in the reader, and it should tell you so after the timeout.

Of course, these are just scribbles. The Poldi documentation is good.

Comments

hahahahaha Pete

I was just searching for how the hell I get this thing to timeout. I installed it a couple of months ago but could never work it out... Thought i would throw 10 minutes at it today and came accross your page on the 4th page of results on google.

Of all the people....

Edd

Excellent, thanks for the tip

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