Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 439467
pcsc-lite loses track of card "IsPresent" status in some situations
Last modified: 2014-04-22 16:33:32 EDT
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #210827 +++ -- Additional comment from ckannan@redhat.com on 2008-03-13 18:21 EST -- ok. Saw these notes in the errata. bug 210827: 1) configure system for smart card/username-password login 2) go to login screen 3) insert smart card 4) while the text entry field is grayed out and you see 3 dots (this is when pam_pkcs11 is connecting to the card), remove the smart card If the timing is right, you'll get an "Authentication Failed" message with the old packages, but not with the new ones -- Additional comment from ckannan@redhat.com on 2008-03-13 18:23 EST -- So I tried the steps mentioned in comment #17. Exactly when I see the ...(3dots), I pulled out the smart card. After that the gdm login screen is unable to recognize insertion/removal events. re-assigning back to Ray to see why ... -- Additional comment from ckannan@redhat.com on 2008-03-26 18:05 EST -- ray enabled gdm debug logging and I wasn't able to reproduce this problem. Feels like this is very much related to timing. Ray will continue to investigate t'row. -- Additional comment from rstrode@redhat.com on 2008-03-28 14:49 EST -- So, I spent some time banging on this yesterday, while talking to Chandra, Jack and Bob on irc. I couldn't reproduce the problem Chandra is seeing exactly (not surprising since it's apparently timing related), but there is another similiar issue we ran into. If you remove and insert the card 32 times (that is 16 removes and 16 inserts) then PK11_IsPresent() from that point on will always return false which means neither gdm nor pam_pkcs11 will see the card inserted anymore. At any rate, that problem and Chandra's problem in comment 18 are independent of the original issue, so we should file them as separate bugs (tentatively against pcsc-lite i guess until we figure out where in the stack the problem is). Those issues aren't likely to get resolved for 5.2 since they're problems with components not on the approved component list and it's so late in the development cycle.
PCSC lite has many resources limited to 16. So if gdm (or another layer) is consuming resources without freeing them when needed you can have a problem. In such a case the PCSC function (SCardEstablishContext() for example) should return SCARD_E_NO_MEMORY
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release. Product Management has requested further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed products. This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update release.
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion, but this component is not scheduled to be updated in the current Red Hat Enterprise Linux release. If you would like this request to be reviewed for the next minor release, ask your support representative to set the next rhel-x.y flag to "?".
per bug council, proposing for rhel 5.5
This bug/component is not included in scope for RHEL-5.11.0 which is the last RHEL5 minor release. This Bugzilla will soon be CLOSED as WONTFIX (at the end of RHEL5.11 development phase (Apr 22, 2014)). Please contact your account manager or support representative in case you need to escalate this bug.