Ludovic Rousseau's blog: Fedora, flatpak and pcsc-lite

The bug "Unable to list readers inside flatpak, when pcscd runs on host." was very strange. It is not like the potential problem I described in "Accessing smart cards from inside a flatpak sandbox" where we have 2 sides (host & flatpak container) using different versions of the pcsc-lite internal protocol.

In the present case both sides are using the same protocol but SCardGetStatusChange() fails with a very strange error: Unknown error: 0x53204253. 0x53204253 is not a (valid) error code returned by any of the PC/SC functions.

Fedora custom build

After some debug I discovered that Fedora provides pcsc-lite packages with a modification.

From https://fedora.pkgs.org/35/fedora-updates-x86_64/pcsc-lite-libs-1.9.5-1.fc35.x86_64.rpm.html your can download the source package which contains the patch file pcsc-lite-1.9.1-maxreaders.patch.

diff -up ./src/PCSC/pcsclite.h.in.readers_32 ./src/PCSC/pcsclite.h.in
--- ./src/PCSC/pcsclite.h.in.readers_32	2018-08-20 16:02:17.708302410 -0700
+++ ./src/PCSC/pcsclite.h.in	2018-08-20 16:02:49.462500967 -0700
@@ -281,7 +281,7 @@ extern const SCARD_IO_REQUEST g_rgSCardT
 
 #define PCSCLITE_VERSION_NUMBER		"@VERSION@"	/**< Current version */
 /** Maximum readers context (a slot is count as a reader) */
-#define PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS			16
+#define PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS			48
 
 #define MAX_READERNAME			128
 
diff -up ./src/PCSC/pcsclite.h.readers_32 ./src/PCSC/pcsclite.h
--- ./src/PCSC/pcsclite.h.readers_32	2018-08-20 16:02:30.993385481 -0700
+++ ./src/PCSC/pcsclite.h	2018-08-20 16:03:00.061567242 -0700
@@ -281,7 +281,7 @@ extern const SCARD_IO_REQUEST g_rgSCardT
 
 #define PCSCLITE_VERSION_NUMBER		"1.9.5"	/**< Current version */
 /** Maximum readers context (a slot is count as a reader) */
-#define PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS			16
+#define PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS			48
 
 #define MAX_READERNAME			128

This patch redefines PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS which is the maximum number of readers supported by pcsc-lite and update the value from 16 to 48.

pcsc-lite internal protocol

To implement the function SCardGetStatusChange() pcsc-lite exchanges the list of readers between the daemon (pcscd) and the client (libpcsclite.so.1).

pcscd will sent a list of PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS readers and libpcsclite.so.1 is expecting a list of PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS readers.

Flatpak issue

In the case of flatpak the server is running on the host and is provided by Fedora, and the client is running inside the flatpak container and is provided by whoever provides the flatpak so possibly with a pcsc-lite client not from Fedora.

And now we have a problem: the daemon is sending a list of 48 readers while the client is expecting a list of only 16 readers. After that, many bad things can happen, like incorrect return values.

Flatpak solution

The solution is simple: include in the flatpak container a client library that is configured like the server on your host i.e. patch the pcsc-lite included in the container.

The bad news is that the flatpak contained application will not be universal any-more. You will need 2 different containers for Fedora and for Debian for example.

pcsc-lite-ccid patch

The pcsc-lite-ccid Fedora package (CCID reader driver) also uses a patch to increase the number of supported readers.

The package source code is available at https://fedora.pkgs.org/35/fedora-updates-x86_64/pcsc-lite-ccid-1.4.36-2.fc35.x86_64.rpm.html and contains the file ccid-1.4.34-maxreaders.patch

diff -up ./src/ccid_ifdhandler.h.readers_32 ./src/ccid_ifdhandler.h
--- ./src/ccid_ifdhandler.h.readers_32	2018-08-20 16:06:34.080905748 -0700
+++ ./src/ccid_ifdhandler.h	2018-08-20 16:07:04.638097096 -0700
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ extern int DriverOptions;
  * The maximum number of readers is also limited in pcsc-lite (16 by default)
  * see the definition of PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS in src/PCSC/pcsclite.h
  */
-#define CCID_DRIVER_MAX_READERS 16
+#define CCID_DRIVER_MAX_READERS 48
 
 /*
  * CCID driver specific functions

According to the spec file pcsc-lite-ccid.spec this changes dates from June 2021:

* Fri Jun 25 2021 Jakub Jelen <jjelen@redhat.com> - 1.4.34-2
- Add support for more readers

So less than a year.

Increase the number of readers?

I guess Fedora/RedHat has one (or more) customer(s) with a need to support more than 16 readers. Maybe that is the case of 0.01% of pcsc-lite users (rough estimation out of my mind). And for some users 48 readers will not be enough (See "A reader for 96 smart cards? sysmoSIMBANK").

A long term solution is to move from a hard coded limit of CCID_DRIVER_MAX_READERS readers to a dynamic (unlimited) list. This is already planed for pcsc-lite in "use a list instead of a fixed size array for 16 reader states" and for ccid in "use a list instead of a fixed size array for 16 reader states". I had no motivation to implement that so far. If you need this change please contact me.