5.8. Smart Card Authentication

Smart cards are an external hardware security feature, most commonly seen in credit cards, but also used by many businesses as authentication tokens. Smart cards can be used to protect Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization virtual machines.

Procedure 5.15. Enabling Smart Cards

  1. Ensure that the smart card hardware is plugged into the client machine and is installed according to manufacturer's directions.
  2. Click the Virtual Machines tab and select a virtual machine.
  3. Click Edit.
  4. Click the Console tab and select the Smartcard enabled check box.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Run the virtual machine by clicking the Console icon. Smart card authentication is now passed from the client hardware to the virtual machine.

Important

If the Smart card hardware is not correctly installed, enabling the Smart card feature will result in the virtual machine failing to load properly.

Procedure 5.16. Disabling Smart Cards

  1. Click the Virtual Machines tab and select a virtual machine.
  2. Click Edit.
  3. Click the Console tab, and clear the Smartcard enabled check box.
  4. Click OK.