2.11. The PC Card Daemon

The pcscd daemon is used to manage connections to PC and SC smart card readers. Although pcscd is usually a low priority task, it can often use more CPU than any other daemon. This additional background noise can lead to higher pre-emption costs to real-time tasks and other undesirable impacts on determinism.

Procedure 2.10. Disabling the pcscd Daemon

  1. Check the status of the pcscd daemon.
    ~]# systemctl status pcscd
    pcscd.service - PC/SC Smart Card Daemon
       Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/pcscd.service; static)
       Active: active (running) …
    
  2. If the pcscd daemon is running, stop it.
    ~]# systemctl stop pcscd
  3. Ensure that pcscd does not restart on boot.
    ~]# systemctl disable pcscd