Ongoing Support for Linux

[Onno Benschop]

Today I have approached my contacts in the ATO about continued support for Linux. I will send updates to this list when they become available. So far the advice I've been given is limited and confines itself to "don't upgrade Firefox".

In addition, I have just downloaded the OS X AUSkey installer package and have commenced de-constructing that with limited results. At first glance it appears to be minimal in scope, a blob and some json with a script wrapped around it to put it in the right place.

Based on the limited information I have, the whole thrust of the plug-ins for Windows/OS X appears to be about supporting a particular version of Java, but that might be misleading or incorrect. It is possible that with the correct combination of Java and Browser Linux will continue to work. This is in the wild speculation zone, so don't plan your future on that!

If you have comments or suggestions about this process, please don't be shy, since this all exists as a community effort and while I'm "the moderator", that doesn't make me any more knowledgeable than the next person, just the one who decided that a mailing list would be a good idea.

o

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Onno Benschop

()/)/)()        ..ASCII for Onno..
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--- -. -. ---   ..Morse for Onno..

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[Jayen]

My plan is to unzip firefox esr (currently based on firefox 45) in my
home directory for auskey webapps. I'll use firefox (stable release)
for day-to-day use.

I can only hope the auskey webapps don't one day decide they won't
work on firefox 45.

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[Onno Benschop]

I started formulating a plan involving Docker. We'll see if it needs to get to that.

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[Jayen]

A docker solution would be fantastic. Then it can have the right
version of the jdk along with the "security" workarounds. Although if
you need sun/oracle jdk, there might be some license issues with
distributing/autodownloading the binaries.

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[Onno Benschop]

Let's not solve the problem before we have to ;-)

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[Rob Hills]

Hi Otto et al,

Firstly, thanks fur the forum & everything you do, Otto.

I know this forum is about AusKey, but are Linux Firefox users aware there's another alternative?

After upgrading my Firefox, I found that AusKey no longer worked as anticipated. However the login page also gave me the option of a MyGov login (flagged as "beta"). I tried this and after a redirection to the MyGov login page, I was back in to the familiar BAS management site.

I have a MyGov account of course, linked to my ATO account so I'm assuming that's why that option was presented on my BAS login page.

Anyway, it all worked flawlessly and I was able to submit my BAS statement just like I could previously with AusKey, except that the "signing" step again wrt via the MyGov login.

Just thought I'd point this out in case people weren't aware of this option.

Cheers,
Rob Hills

[Onno Benschop]

Update: At this time I can advise you that Linux will continue to be a supported platform for the ATO. This is great news!

As you may know, currently the AUSkey infrastructure relies on Java to authenticate. As of Firefox version 52 [1][2], legacy plugins using NPAPI technology will stop working. If you've been playing for a while you'll recall that this is also true for Chrome which discontinued support for NPAPI a year and a half ago [4].

This is essentially why the ATO software stopped working under Chrome on Linux and will stop with version 52 of Firefox.

This same change has happened under Windows and OS X. Fortunately, the solution that exists for Windows (and OS X) will also apply to Linux. This has as a side-benefit that both Firefox and Chrome will be supported under Linux. In addition, Chrome compatible browsers such as Vivaldi and Opera are also expected to be supported.

Until this is released we have several options:

• While AUSkey is still working on your machine, you can link MyGov to the ATO and bypass the AUSkey authentication process. If AUSkey no longer works on your machine, you can as a once-off, use a Windows machine to do the linking. (Well spotted Rob!)
  
• If you don't upgrade Firefox to version 52, AUSkey will continue to work.
  
• If you move to Firefox ESR [3] (Extended Support Release), you can continue to use NPAPI plug-ins until early 2018.

I have also been advised that the libabrakmbe.so shared object file that Michael and Jayen discovered is code that does the authentication to AUSkey. In the past, this was achieved by a plug-in written by Oracle, which if you recall required installation prior to use - and instructions to achieve this formed the origins for this mailing list and the FAQ.

At this time I'm not able to tell you when this will roll-out, just that it exists today and that it's coming.

Sources:

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/

[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/07/20/reducing-adobe-flash-usage-in-firefox/

[3] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

[4] http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation

[Dan Dylan]

I found this while trying to downgrade to Firefox ESR on Ubuntu 16.04LTS

http://askubuntu.com/questions/890603/how-to-install-firefox-32-bit-esr-52-on-ubuntu-16-04-64-bit-without-uninstalling

I works for me.  I can log into the business portal just as I did prior to version 52 with no other changes necessary.

I have not researched or considered the consequences of setting that configuration item, but it appears that it will be completely dropped in Firefox 53. 

BTW I did not clear all history as suggested in step 6.  Simply restarting Firefox was enough.

Cheers

Dan

[Onno Benschop]

Thank you for that idea Dan.

A word of caution if I may. I believe that this method doesn't actually down-grade Firefox, just makes the new one last a little longer which means that you've not actually fixed the problem and the moment the next version arrives, this will break.

Having said that, I'm happy to be wrong.

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