Issues related to CAC on Linux (as of early 2013)

Over the last month I’ve experienced a small explosion in email traffic about CAC on Linux, especially Ubuntu derivatives — most of it bad. It seems like some version of Firefox has a nasty bug where Firefox crashes hard as soon as you stick your CAC in the pooter, and then can’t get up again for as long as your thing is in there.

There are a few other issues, but this is the worst one affecting the largest number of users. There are three problems I’ve got resolving this:

1. The error reports I get in email are vague. Everything I know is written above. I don’t know what version, what derivative of Ubuntu (one guy said “Ubuntu” another said “Xubuntu”, another said “Kubuntu, I think”), what version of Firefox, what version of pcsc-tools, coolkey, etc. Nothing. Some of the reports may even be about CAC on SL6 for all I know, because nobody has told me anything.
2. I no longer have a CAC nor any involvement in CAC tool development. I’m out of the Army, nobody is going to pay me to deal with this (I’d love to, but I’ve gotta eat), and I’ve got no way to register for a CAC and all the different portal sites again to test it even if I had one.
3. I can’t update the instructionals for the current versions of the Fedora or Debian families because I can’t test anything without actually having a CAC and a place to use it (DTS, AKO, DKO, labs, etc.)… which sucks. I’m considering opening a wiki so the community can help itself maintain a current list of tutorials/versions. But I need help gardening it, and no volunteers have stepped forward.

The second problem is, actually, the smaller of the two. If I know a bit more about the distros, packages and versions installed I can get a pretty good lock on where the problem is and raise the attention of people who are getting paid to maintain CAC tools and squish Firefox bugs.

If you know anything about this please leave a note below with more detailed information so we can start getting some direction on a fix.