Any success with fingerprint scanner/fprintd for Gnome login?

Any success with fingerprint scanner/fprintd for Gnome login?

[Ben Sturmfels]

Hi Folks,

Has anyone had success using a fingerprint scanner for Gnome login? I'm currently
on a ThinkPad X230, but did have the fingerprint scanner working on an X60
working under Trisquel about 8 years ago.

I added "(service fprintd-service-type)" to my Guix System services list and
"fprintd" to my packages. I also added myself to the "input" group, which I
suspect might be required to enroll fingerprints as regular user.  After a reboot
I can run "fprintd-enrol" and "fprintd-verify" to add fingerprints.

I was initially unable to log in to Gnome at all (no password prompt), getting
the error:

  "Sorry, fingerprint authentication didn't work. Please try again."

After another reboot, I did get a password prompt and can login by password, but
that error message flashes rapidly below. The fingerprint scanner also doesn't
light up, so I assume it's not being activated for some reason.

Any suggestions or thoughts on how to troubleshoot this?

Regards,
Ben

Re: Any success with fingerprint scanner/fprintd for Gnome login?

[Felix Lechner via]

Hi Ben,

On Sun, Mar 24 2024, Ben Sturmfels wrote:

> Any suggestions or thoughts on how to troubleshoot this?

I do not use GNOME or fprintd but the manual page says it's a DBus
service that comes with a PAM module.

I am not sure that fprintd-service-type installs the PAM module, so
maybe that happens in GDM.  I was further unable to find your error
message starting with "Sorry" in the Gilab repos for libfprint or
fprintd. [1]

I would snoop around in /var/log/messages or nearby files with grep.
Logging is a wonderful thing.

Kind regards
Felix

[1] https://fprint.freedesktop.org/