Chris Saul's Blog

Monday December 19, 2005

Getting SchoolTool running with Solaris A customer of ours is looking at SchoolTool, as well as considering Sun Rays with Solaris on AMD for their school environment. SchoolTool is written in Python and has packages for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux available, but nothing prepackaged for Solaris. It's very simple to install, although the readme misses out a couple of critical steps and there is a small error in the Makefile. I used a recent build of Solaris Express running on my Toshiba laptop, but I expect any Solaris version will work fine, providing the right versions of Python and libxml are installed. Here are the steps I took. * Download latest source distribution from SchoolTool website. * Unpack into /usr/local, which gives me /usr/local/schooltool-0.11.3 * Ensure I have the latest versions of Python and libxml2 and that my PATH is correct. I use pkg-get to get the latest GNU stuff and handle dependencies. * cd into /usr/local/schooltool-0.11.3/Zope3 to build Zope. * Link gcc to Sun's /usr/ucb/cc mv /usr/ucb/cc /usr/ucb/cc.orig ln -s /usr/sfw/bin/gcc /usr/ucb/cc * Run python setup.py install * The readme file misses out a step here - you need to run make next to complete the installation of Zope. Whether you use Sun's make or GNU make compilation will fail with the error 'Command failed for target 'bin/runzope'. This is due to there being no bin directory present in the SchoolTool directory. Make the bin directory and run make: mkdir bin make * Everything appeared to compile correctly. * Build SchoolTool. cd /usr/local/schooltool-0.11.3 python setup.py install * The readme misses out a step here. You need to run make again. make * Create a copy of the example server configuration file: cp schooltool.conf.in schooltool.conf * Make any changes necessary. It seems to work out of the box, but you may wish to check that it doesn't conflict with any other web servers currently running. * Start the schooltool server: /usr/local/schooltool-0.11.3/schooltool-server.py * The schooltool server started and listened on the defaultport: port 7080. I accessed it via http://localhost:7080 Login with username manager and password schooltool

Sun Ray Smartcard FAQ I had to put together a little FAQ on Sun Ray smartcards for a customer recently. Since this info doesn't seem to be in one easily accessible place on the web at the moment, I'll post it here.

* The smartcards that Sun ships are Schlumberger PayFlex smartcards. They are actually now technically "Axalto" Payflex cards since Schlumberger spun off it's smartcard division. That division is now a separate entity called Axalto.

* A full list of the various cards supported is found in /etc/opt/SUNWut/smartcard.

* Cards based on ISO-7816-1 are supported. Cards with a T=0 or T=1 communication protocol are supported - you'll need SRSS 3.0 or later to get T=1 support.

* When buying cards from a vendor other than Sun, nine times out of ten no special 'activation' is required. The Sun Ray simply reads the card's serial number, no special pre-work is needed.

If the card is not instantly usable you will get an icon in your screen with a symbol representing Sun Ray and a card and a green arrow from the card to the Sun Ray.

If you look at auth.log and see that the card has not been recognized you may need to create a smartcard config file in /etc/opt/SUNWut/smartcard and include it in the probeorder.

Vendors who produce Sun Ray compatible cards:

Axalto: http://www.axalto.com

Giesecke & Devrient: http://www.gi-de.com/

G&D's Card Solutions: http://www.gi-de.com/portal/page?_pageid=42,64822&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

SecuNet for consulting and integration of Card solutions : http://www.secunet.de/index.php?ln=2

Oberther Card Systems: http://www.oberthurcs.com

Activcard for the middleware: www.activcard.com

Gemplus: http://www.gemplus.com ( Dec 19 2005, 11:26:36 AM GST ) Permalink