If you have Netscape installed, you can also use the graphical user
interface program sdsi2ui. sdsi2ui interacts with Netscape
to display menu pages and take requests from you to issue and view
certificates. Normally, when using sdsi2ui you don't have to deal
with raw certificates, just with English descriptions of them.
The idea of a Web-based user interface for SDSI comes from Gillian Elcock's Master's Thesis (see section References Elcock), in which she developed one for an earlier version of SDSI, SDSI 1.0.
You start this interface by typing `sdsi2ui'. Just like
sdsi2sh(4), sdsi2ui reads your
public key out of your principal file
`~/.sdsi/your-principal.sdsi2', and then tries to find the
corresponding private key - in your PGP private keyring, if you
made a PGP key, or in your SSH identity file, if you made an SSH key.
sdsi2ui prompts you for the passphrase so it can unlock your
private key, so you can use it to sign certificates.
Once it has your private key, sdsi2ui will start a Netscape if one
is not already running. Either way, the first page it displays through
Netscape is the introductory page, called "Your SDSI Home Page". From
this page there are links to pages that allow you to do all sorts of
SDSI things: issue authorization certificates, issue name-binding certificates,
understand the certificates you have issued, etc.
sdsi2ui is really just sdsi2sh built with a collection of
embedded Perl scripts from `tools/sdsiui-scripts' that feeds
Netscape pages and takes requests from it. I have only just
begun to write these scripts; they aren't anywhere near finished,
and what has been written may not work. Since the target audience for
these early releases shouldn't have much want for sdsi2ui, I've
left it in this pseudo-abandoned state for now. It builds, but as it
stands it's more of a curiosity, a teaser, for what it really will be
later.
Nevertheless, I've written some words about how to work on these scripts. See section Changing the GUI, for a little about this.
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