[Michlib-l] Porteus Kiosk - MeLCat Certificate Issue

[Bruce MacDonald]

I am transitioning our OPACS from Windows to Porteus Kiosk
<https://porteus-kiosk.org/>, a locked down lightweight linux OS that has
been discussed here before on a couple occasions. I'm running Porteus with
Firefox as the chosen browser. I love it, mostly.

For those of you who are already using Porteus, what are you doing about
access to the MeLCat catalog? Our OPAC includes links to MeLCat to steer
people there if we don't have an item in our catalog. The problem is that
the MeLCat site gives a certificate error in Firefox
"SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER", which has to be overridden by clicking
"advanced" and  "accept the risk and continue". Once that is done, it adds
the MeLCat certificate as an exception to the Firefox security rules, and
will then work fine. However, because of the nature of Porteus, that
exception is wiped out when the OPAC reboots, and the error will return. I
don't want our patrons to see a full-screen error message saying that MeL
is an insecure website.

In Porteus I've tried several workarounds, including using Chrome, which
accepts the MeLCat site certificate, but Chrome does not integrate all the
options available in Porteus, as compared to Firefox. Another option I
found in the Porteus forums is to recompile the Porteus ISO file, and force
it to insert files containing a certificate exception into the Firefox
profile as it is created at the time of installation. That seems really
cumbersome though, and I will have to redo that each time I want to upgrade
Porteus with a new ISO. Has anybody else had this problem and come up with
a solution?

BTW - Maybe the real solution is the certificate? This error will show up
on any Firefox browser. Also, I have had to add an exception to our
Kaspersky antivirus to allow my Windows machines to connect to mel.org,
which it blocked by default because of the same certificate issue.

Thanks,
Bruce MacDonald
Peter White Public Library
Marquette, MI
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