Installation

This page explains how to install eidreader on your computer.

Install eidreader on Linux

Instructions for Linux users. Windows users please skip to the next section.

  1. Install the eidreader script itself:

    $ sudo apt install python3 swig
$ pip install eidreader

  2. Register beid:// as a custom URL scheme on your machine, as explained in the following steps.

  3. Edit your mimeapps.list file and add the following line:

    x-scheme-handler/beid=beid.desktop;

    The mimeapps.list file is usually in ~/.local/share/applications or ~/.config. (askubuntu, archlinux) Run locate mimeapps.list to see where it occurs.

  4. Create a file /usr/share/applications/beid.desktop with this content:

    [Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=/path/to/env/bin/eidreader -l /path/to/eidreader.log %u
Name=eidreader
Comment=Run eidreader
Icon=
Categories=Application;Network;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/beid;

Or if you like to play, say Exec=/home/joe/bin/beid.sh %u in above file and then create an executable beid.sh:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
LOGFILE=/home/joe/bin/beid.log
date > $LOGFILE
echo eidreader $* >> $LOGFILE
/home/joe/virtualenvs/py3/bin/eidreader -l $LOGFILE $* 2>> $LOGFILE

Install eidreader on Windows

Instructions for Windows users.

  1. Download the following file to a temporary folder on your computer: https://eidreader.lino-framework.org/dl/eidreader-1.0.6.zip

  2. Unpack it to a folder of your choice, e.g. C:\eidreader.

  3. Register beid:// as a custom URL scheme on your machine, as explained in the following steps.

  4. Open Notepad or a similar text editor and copy the following text to a new file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\beid]
@="URL: beid Protocol"
"URL Protocol"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\beid\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\beid\shell\open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\beid\shell\open\command]
@="C:\\eidreader\\eidreader.exe -l C:\\eidreader\\eidreader.log %1"

  1. Check whether the command on the last line in the file is the folder you chose in step 2.

  2. Save the file in a temporary folder as beid.reg.

  3. Open Windows Explorer, find the beid.reg file, double-click on it and confirm modification of your registry.

  4. You can now delete the file beid.reg or keep it in case you want to install eidreader on other computers.

Test whether it worked

How to verify whether eidreader works:

  1. To actually run eidreader, you need to install the Belgian eID middleware from https://eid.belgium.be/en

  2. Point your browser to https://weleup1.mylino.net/, and sign in as robin (or romain or rolf depending on your preferred language) and click on the [Read eID card] quicklink in the main screen. When asked whether to give the site permission to open the beid link with eidreader, say yes. The card reader will start reading. Lino will ask you whether you want to create a new client based on the card data. If you let Lino create a new database record, you should afterwards delete that client if you don’t want others to see the stored information.

Troubleshooter

“src/dyn_unix.c:34:SYS_dyn_LoadLibrary() libbeidpkcs11.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”

or

“LoadLibrary() failed with error 126: The specified module could not be found.”

–> you don’t have the beid middleware installed. See https://eid.belgium.be/en/linux-eid-software-installation