Belgian eID under Ubuntu 7.10
categories:
- Firefox
- Hardware
- Linux
I had almost forgotten that I was offered an eID card reader by our Federal Public Service FINANCE, a few months ago when I went up to their offices to get some info.
I decided to give it a try tonight.
The sticker on the back of the reader says “ACR38U-SPC-FDT (FW104)”.
I first blindly tried to install some packages (beidgui to read my card info) but ran into several problems.
beid :
When running beidgui, it was not even listing the card reader in the options tab.
Running from the CLI, I was getting the following error message : Error: can’t open /var/run/openct/status: No such file or directory
If I was starting beidgui using sudo, the card reader was listed correctly.
At some point I also got the following error in beidgui : “Error : Wrong Root Certificate”
The card reader was also detected as another reader for a while.
I removed every packages and was about to give up when I finally found the answer that made things work out of the box at http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/materiel/acr38
Packages to install :
sudo apt-get install libacr38u libacr38ucontrol0 beid-tools pcscd libpcsclite-dev beidgui libbeid2 libbeidlibopensc2
After installing these, I was able to read my card under beid.
**Firefox : **
In order to access websites working with the eID, you need to load the PKCS#11 module.
Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Encryption > Security Devices > Load
Module name : “Belgium Identity Card PKCS#11” Module filename : “/usr/lib/libbeidpkcs11.so.2”
Restart Firefox when done.
The card reader MUST be plugged before starting Firefox if you intend to access a website requiring access to your eID.
Interesting links :
http://users.pandora.be/mydotcom/howto/linux/ubuntubelpic.htm https://www.mijndossier.rrn.fgov.be/
This last link is interesting and requires your eID, you can see a lot of stuff the government stores about you (driving licence, passport delivery, etc.).
I even found a mistake in my file, I’m living in an apartment and the previous tenant is listed in my family description… Our public services are not at the edge in every fields.