Bridge apparently needed even for Chrome

[refi93]

We were testing AdaLite with BitBox on a computer that hadn't been connected to Bitbox02 before and we were getting a "Not allowed" error (unfortunately I don't have the stack trace) until we installed bitbox bridge, though it shouldn't be needed for Chrome browser which uses WebHID. After installing the bridge it started woking. Even before the bridge was installed the Bitbox desktop app worked fine with the device on that computer.

The computer has OS Ubuntu 20.04 and Chrome 95.0.4638.69

Any idea what could have been fixed by installing the bridge app even if there are apparently no network calls to it in Chrome? Does the installer perhaps perform any additional setup?

[benma]

The only thing that comes to mind are the udev rules. On Linux, udev rules need to be installed for a device to be detected. See /etc/udev/rules.d.

These are installed with the BitBoxApp and also the BitBoxBridge. They can also be installed manually as described in https://shiftcrypto.ch/download/ (Linux -> Other distros).

[benma]

To be clear, the bridge (or installing it) is not needed for WebHID access in Chrome. The udev rules are needed, and they can be installed manually or by installing the BitBoxApp/BitBoxBridge.

[refi93]

I also thought of udev rules, but I found it weird that the device worked fine with the bitbox app even before the bridge was installed and Chrome detected the device, it just failed after selecting it

[benma]

Ah, in that case it might be because the BitBoxApp was still open? Only one connection is possible at a time to the device.

You can verify that the bridge is not needed by just turning it off (sudo service bitbox-bridge stop). During installation of the bridge, nothing special happens except for installing the udev rules.

[refi93]

I don't think the BitBoxApp was open when we first ran into that issue. Does the BitBoxApp install udev rules as well? I guess that could explain the issue better as then it can be the case that first we ran into the issue because of no udev rules, and then, after installing the BitBoxApp, we experienced the same error, but now due to the BitBoxApp running in parallel

[benma]

Yes, the BitBoxApp also installs the udev rules.

We've been meaning to update the error message text to say that only one wallet app can be connected to the BitBox02 at once, as it is quite a frequent issue. Maybe at some point in the future there could even be a dialog or something to let the user choose if they want to steal the connection from the other opened apps.