Brian Gough’s Notes

Needing to migrate a client’s website from Windows to GNU/Linux I recently discovered Michael Kohn’s ASP2PHP for converting Microsoft Active Server Pages to PHP.

The site was fairly straightforward, using ASP for menus and contact forms, and the converter worked first time. The software is only at version 0.76, and had a few rough edges, so I was impressed that it worked so smoothly. Up to that point it had seemed like the only game in town was the proprietary Chilisoft, so this was a good discovery.

The project homepage is http://asp2php.naken.cc/.

I received my admin pin earlier this week and have now got my FSFE cryptocard working. I’ve generated a key that I can use for signing files (or encryption). I’ve still got a lot to learn about smart cards—from browsing on the web I’ve read that its possible to use a smartcard with ssh, or for unix logins (via a PAM module). Those are both things I’d like to get working. Maybe one day I won’t need a password to login to this site if I have my card ;-)

Success.. I can now read and write to smart cards.

Got my new card reader this morning, so spent most of today getting it working.

I don’t have my FSFE pin yet, so I tried it out on some spare GPG cards I had left over from a talk I gave last year about free software & security.

The fsfe cryptocard arrived today. Looks very nice! After a bit of research I have ordered a new card reader (SPR532). I decided to go for one with an built-in keypad so that the pin can be entered directly into the reader (see here). May as well do things properly, the chain is only as strong as the weakest link and all that.