Success: eToken PRO on Debian

Finally, after several weeks of kicking this stubborn bucket of bits, I've managed to produce a working .deb for the Aladdin eToken PRO (TM). The eToken looks like a small USB stick, but it is a smartcard in disguise. They're about $30 and we've purchased a hundred or so for putting grid certificates on.

Many thanks to Jan Just Keijser, who pioneered the effort of getting these (poorly supported) tokens to work under Linux. He built the software as an RPM, which works under Red Hat EL 4 (and derivatives), Fedora Core 6 and Suse 10. Unfortunately, we can't distribute the RPMs due to licensing constraints (the Aladdin drivers are proprietary, bleh).

Building debs has been an interesting exercise in finding the subtle differences between RHEL4 and Ubuntu; following the Debian Policy (as well as I could); building binary debs on the fly and doing it the proper way (with sources); setting up an apt repository for said debs and, most of all, stumbling over the impossibilities with autotools and libtool (see yesterdays post).

As soon as I find a proper place to put op my debs I'll post the location. Contrary to the rpms, the deb is freely redistributable as it contains only the free (libre) software. Provided that you find the Aladdin drivers elsewhere, you may get your eToken to work on your Ubuntu laptop!

And oh, by the way: this has been tested on Ubuntu 6.06 and 7.04, and Debian 4 ("Etch").