Changes/Replace Coolkey with OpenSC

Replace Coolkey with OpenSC

Summary

There are more PKCS#11 libraries supporting the same smart cards in the system. For the next releases, we would like to promote OpenSC as a default PKCS#11 provided in place where Coolkey driver is used these days, which will extend a list of supported smart cards and make use of the most of the OpenSC.

Owner

• Name: Jakub Jelen
• Email: jjelen@redhat.com
• Release notes owner:

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 26
• Last updated: 2017-02-02
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

Currently, there are several PKCS#11 modules available in Fedora. Some of them provide the same functionality as the others. Currently, the majority of the work around smart cards is done in the OpenSC project supporting all the major cards we are interested to have in Fedora. On the other side, there is no significant development efforts in Coolkey project, which is currently used by default in some applications (NSS).

The provided libraries are dynamically loaded PKCS#11 libraries, so existing applications should not depend directly on either package. The transition should be smooth as the change of the path in the configurations, if any. The only exceptions are NSS (Coolkey installs its module to the NSS database), ESC and pesign (explicit requires should be removed).

$ dnf repoquery --whatrequires coolkey
esc-0:1.1.0-30.fc25.x86_64
pesign-0:0.112-4.fc25.x86_64

We would like to

• Get rid of explicit requires (pesign, esc)
• Switch the default PKCS#11 module in applications from Coolkey to OpenSC (NSS, ESC, pesign, ...?)
• Retire the Coolkey package from Fedora (estimated in Fedora 27+)

During last months we worked with NSS to implement and test missing features in OpenSC to follow CoolKey driver and specification behavior.

Benefit to Fedora

Having multiple PKCS#11 provider libraries can be confusing for users especially when used over proxy, such as p11-kit. In this case the tokens could show up multiple times with different functionality.

There is no significant development going on in Coolkey anymore, unlike with OpenSC, which has very active upstream, both delivering new drivers for new cards frequently and fixing reported problems promptly.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • For Fedora 26, we want to switch all applications to OpenSC and leave Coolkey as a backup. We will unregister coolkey from NSS database and register OpenSC instead.
  • For Fedora 27, we would like to retire coolkey package, if there will not show up any problem with the transition in previous phase.

• Other developers:
  • The other packages using PKCS#11 should make sure they work with OpenSC, if they were depending on coolkey directly for future releases (will be communicated with affected package owners).

• Release engineering: N/A

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Previously installed Fedora will have Coolkey registered in NSS database (if installed). The upgrade path needs to ensure that the coolkey will be removed from database and OpenSC installed instead (explicit requires Coolkey -> OpenSC?).

All the cards supported by Coolkey should be supported by OpenSC by now (CAC patch pending).

How To Test

• Make sure you have installed the packages below:
  • opensc, coolkey and nss
• The command modutil -list -dbdir /etc/pki/nssdb
  • should not list CoolKey PKCS #11 Module
  • should list OpenSC PKCS #11 Module
• Any of your application using Smart Cards/PKCS#11 should work with /usr/lib64/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.so PKCS#11 module instead of /usr/lib64/pkcs11/libcoolkeypk11.so

User Experience

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Dependencies

The dependency on Coolkey package should be dropped or changed to OpenSC.

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No
• Blocks product? product

Documentation

N/A (not a System Wide Change)