On-demand creation of vpcd instances

[rileyg98]

Not exactly an issue, but a query.

Currently working on a server that would, ideally, start VPCD instances on-demand for a client to use to provision a smart card applet. Once the provisioning is done, the instance would be killed (and a firewall rule deleted). Is this possible (preferably a unique name for each reader too, to make targeting easier), or would it be easier to configure VPCD to generate a number of instances. If so, the documentation appears to be lacking on how this is done.

[rileyg98]

Scratch the second question - I can create pairs of readers by adding more inputs into the vpcd config file, but only the first reader pair shows up in vpcd-config. However, I'd prefer a more elegant solution (ie, making 10 readers of the first vpcd config)

[frankmorgner]

I suppose you are talking about Windows?! For each entry in the config file, there's a process (WUDFHost.exe) started once you've installed the driver. This is done either by the installer or by devcon.exe. The latter should allow you to realize a batch script that can be triggered by an event.

I don't plan to make the number of readers dynamic since this should easily be realized by a script.

Note that on Unix, the number of slots per reader is configurable at compile time. And pcscd typically only starts "on demand", which means that the number of readers (i.e. the number of instances of the driver that are loaded) can also be made dynamic by a script.

[frankmorgner]

By the way, vpcd-config only shows your "compile-time setup" assuming you are using the default config. I never had the time to implement the actual checking whether this (or more instances of) vpcd is (are) available.

[rileyg98]

Thanks for the reply, Frank. No, I'm actually doing this on Unix. I actually also noticed there's a 16-slot maximum in pcscd as well from trying to find how to load extra copies of the driver (which I will do some research on).

[frankmorgner]

See LudovicRousseau/PCSC#13

[rileyg98]

Yeah, that's where I discovered that from. I'll close this up as my question is now answered.