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Every command has to be sent on a single line, except for the send command, which may contain newlines.
For some of the arguments or parameters values you can use quoted strings such as "/dev/cua1", but not always. This is specified in the command descriptions.
The following commands are always available, independent of the reader that is selected. For the reader specific commands, see the page for that specific reader or try the help command.
The general commands are, in alphabetical order:
Usage:
dump
This command will output any data sent by the smart card that is still left in the buffer.
Usage:
flush
This command will get rid of any data sent by the smart card that is still left in the buffer.
Usage:
help [ topic ]
where topic is a help topic. To see the available help topics, omit topic.
Usage:
reader type
reader type ( )
reader type ( name=val { , name=val } )
This command sets the current reader to a type kind of reader. It is possible to specify reader parameters in a comma-separated list between the parentheses, name is the parameter name and val is the parameter value, which can be a quoted string.
The readers are categorized in two groups: Physical readers and non-physical readers. The latter category contains the so-called "software readers".
Physical readers are drivers for readers that only transmit data to and from the smart card, without implementing an ISO 7816-3 protocol.
These readers can be used for the so-called "software readers", using the reader option:
The following readers are documented in Dumb Readers:
dumbmouse
drchip
uniprog/serprog
The following readers do implement an ISO 7816-3 protocol or can only be used for one particular smart card system, instead of any system.
Some of them are called "software readers", because they are in fact implementations of a protocol or application that can be used with different Physical Readers.
none
t1
Usage:
reset
This command will reset the smart card and display the card's ATR.
Usage:
send data .
This command sends data to the smart card (do not forget the trailing dot!). If the reader that is selected (with the reader command) already implements a certain protocol, either in hardware or in software, then data should only contain the data that will be wrapped into the protocol.
data normally consists of hexadecimal numbers separated by spaces or newlines. If a quote (") is encountered, all text following the quote will be taken as an ASCII representation of the bytes, until the next quote is encountered or the line is ended.
Quoted mode is handy for sending ASCII data or (on GSM SIM cards) the PIN code to the card.
It is possible to use the backslash (\) to escape a quote character or another backslash or to denote a metacharacter such as \n, \t, \a or \0, which have the same meaning as in the C programming language. The metacharacters are \0, \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t and \v.
Usage:
settings
This command returns the reader parameter settings for the currently selected reader. The first line will contain a description of the parameters and its readers, e.g. "T=1 settings" and the next lines will contain one parameter setting per line, in the form
name = value