[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#854005: Bug#854005: ssh-agent no longer works

[Wouter Verhelst]

So, for clarity,

On Sat, Feb 04, 2017 at 12:37:52PM -0500, Antoine Beaupre wrote:
> This seems like an important regression, however. If "disable-ccid"
> should absolutely be added by users, this should be noted in the
> NEWS.Debian file. Alternatively, this should "just work" regardless of
> whether it's enabled or not.

The problem, as gniibe explained it to me, is that scdaemon tries to
access the card exclusively using *both* direct CCID and PCSC (through
pcscd) at the *same* time. Obviously this can't work.

Therefore, the user has to make a selection, to use either CCID or PCSC.
If the user wants to do the first, then the "pcscd" package should *not*
be installed.

If the user is in my situation, however, where they also need to deal
with other smart card software and pcscd is still required, then they
need to disable CCID, which is done with the "disable-ccid" line in the
scdaemon.conf file.

gniibe suggested that fixing this may be too late before the freeze, and
that the fact that he added multi-cardreader support is an important new
feature that solves many problems at the price of needing some good
documentation about this bug.

I concur; the workaround is relatively easy (choose one option, where
"CCID" is probably the most common and certainly the most tested by the
developers themselves, and disable the other method), and after that the
problem is gone. However, the gnupg package maintainers might want to
think about how to best document this issue.

Regards,

-- 
< ron> I mean, the main *practical* problem with C++, is there's like a dozen
       people in the world who think they really understand all of its rules,
       and pretty much all of them are just lying to themselves too.
 -- #debian-devel, OFTC, 2016-02-12