How to use the european healt card on Archlinux

08 Jan 2011 Matteo Mattei linux archlinux usb

Since some months the regions are sending the new electronic healt card to the house of the people. These cards are featured with a microchip. The goal to these cards is the same of the previous ones with in addition the possibility to be read by a smart card reader and store, if you want, your electronic healt records.

This let you enter in your region website and look all your medicines taken, your hospital recovers etc…

So let’s start! In this article I will show you how to use this card with the card-reader provided by the Hospital URP with Archlinux and more in general with Linux.

For who does not have the reader, I can suggest to buy the miniLector bit4id directly by the URP of the hospital in your zone because its price is fixed (in Italy) to 4,20 Euros instead of fifteen/twenty Euros that is sold elsewhere.

The first thing to do is to connect the bit4id reader to a free USB port of your pc and type lsusb in a terminal. You should obtain a line like this:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 072f:90cc Advanced Card Systems, Ltd ACR38 SmartCard Reader

Now install the needing packages:

pacman -Sy ccid pcsclite pcsc-tools pcsc-perl
yaourt -Sy --aur libminilector38u-bit4id libasecnsp11

With root user run pcsc_scan, you should obtain a similar output:

[root@barracuda ~]# pcsc_scan
PC/SC device scanner
V 1.4.17 (c) 2001-2009, Ludovic Rousseau <ludovic.rousseau@free.fr>
Compiled with PC/SC lite version: 1.6.4
Scanning present readers...
0: ACS ACR 38U-CCID 00 00
Sat Jan  8 17:45:24 2011
  Reader 0: ACS ACR 38U-CCID 00 00
  Card state: Card inserted
  ATR: 3B DF 18 00 81 31 FE 7D 00 6B 15 0C 01 80 01 01 01 43 4E 53 10 31 80 F9

At this point you have to configure Firefox for authentication. Proceed in this way:

1. Make sure the card reader is connected to the PC and the card is inserted
2. Run Firefox and select Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Encryption -> Security Devices
3. Click on Load button and insert EuropeanHealtCard as description and /usr/lib/libaseCnsP11.so as path.
4. To verify that all works correctly, try to open the link https://servizi.arubapec.it/crtest/showcert.php and insert your PIN.

If the authentication is passed, you should see a welcome message.

Now you only need to access to your electronic health records from your region website using your PIN provided during the card activation.

For a guide on configuring the European Healt card with Ubuntu take a look at Andrea Grandi’s blog.

For more informations on Linux and the European Healt Card look at Regione Toscana website.