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Please select a category Condor Clusters General Unix Info General Web Info Horatio Java Resources Recovering Files From Snapshots Securing Your Host Telephones Using LPR to Print Using the Web Using Sun Smart Cards Using Version Control Systems Using VNC Writable Optical Media

Using Sun Smart Cards

Introduction

Department-issued smart cards may be used on the SunRay stations in the Taylor basement lab. These cards can be used to save, restore, and migrate your desktop sessions on any of our SunRays. The smart card does this by associating the state of your session with a token stored on the card. You can leave a SunRay without logging out and return later on, and your desktop session will be in exactly the same state you left it. You needn't even return to the same SunRay.

Smart cards can be picked up in Taylor 145.

Important Points to Note

• Your password is NOT stored on your smart card. If someone else uses your card, they will NOT be able to gain access to your account without your password.
• Your files are NOT stored on your smart card. The only thing that is remembered is the state of your session. You will continue to store your files where you have always stored them.
• You can use the SunRays without using a smart card. They will work very much like a regular Sun machine.
• When you log out of your window manager on a SunRay, you will be logged out completely. This is different from the Linux machines and the other Sun machines, where you then have to log out of the machine itself.

How to Use the Smart Card

1. Insert the smart card into the smart card reader on the SunRay (following the instructional diagram next to the reader).
2. Log in to the SunRay with your UTCS username and password.
3. Use machine as you would a normal Sun machine.
4. When you are done, you can either
   1. Log out (exit your window manager) just as you normally would. When you get back to the login prompt, remove your smart card. In this case, your session will not be saved on the card.
   2. Simply remove your smart card without logging out. This allows you to later return to this SunRay, or to ANY of the other SunRays in the lab, at a later date and insert your smart card again. It will prompt you for your password, and then return you to the state that the last SunRay you used was in when you logged out. For instance, you can put your card in, log in, open up Mozilla and go to the CS homepage. Remove your card (without logging out). Go to the next machine over and put your smart card in. Type in your password when prompted. This SunRay which you've potentially never used will come up with Mozilla showing the CS homepage, identical to the screen on the last SunRay you used.

How Smart Cards Work

When you receive the card, it has no session associated with it. Insert the card before (or after) logging into a SunRay using your UTCS login/password. Remove the card before logging out, and the SunRay will suspend your login session and display a fresh login screen for the next user. At this point your suspended login is associated with your card. No one else can access it without knowing your password. When you re-insert the card your desktop session will be restored after you supply your password. Then you can either logout normally, in which case your card becomes unassigned again, or you can remove the card before logging out, and re-suspend the session.

If you insert your card into a SunRay which another person is using, it will suspend his or her session until you finish. At that time, a lockscreen will appear prompting for the original user's password. This can get confusing, so we recommend that you not do it unless you really need to.

The smartcards will NOT work in the SunBlade workstations in the same room.

A potential problem is a large number of suspended sessions which tie up system resources. If this becomes a problem, we will have to terminate some of the suspended sessions.

Problems or Questions?

Please feel free to play around with the smart card functionality. If you find something that doesn't make sense, doesn't work, or doesn't work as you expected, please email gripe@cs.utexas.edu and explain the problem to us.