How can I use my fingerprint reader?

Question

I have an HP dv4 2080br with a fingerprint reader that works fine on Windows 7. lsusb lists it as

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 138a:0005 DigitalPersona

How can I use it on Ubuntu 10.10?

Answer 1

There is a packaged called fprint available in this PPA However, it does not appear that your device is listed as "Supported". There is a bug Bug #285089 Which details issues with a similar USB device id though I don't believe it is related nor confirmation that this device does not work with the fprint package.

Answer 2

try this! searched for around 5 months trying to get mine to install..... you WILL find one of the three will work. https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint as far as which one will work... well thats trial and error

Answer 3

Assumed that you are using Ubuntu 12.10.

Install the libpam-fprintd and printd packages from universe.

$ sudo apt-get install libpam-fprintd fprintd

You should see the following.

$ grep fprint /etc/pam.d/common-auth 
auth    [success=2 default=ignore]  pam_fprintd.so

Enroll your fingerprint.

$ fprintd-enroll

For additional security you may want to use only password to log in to the desktop. Then do the following.

$ sudo cp /etc/pam.d/common-auth /etc/pam.d/common-auth-nofinger
$ sudo vi /etc/pam.d/common-auth-nofinger

Edit /etc/pam.d/common-auth-nofinger. Remove the line

auth    [success=3 default=ignore] pam_fprintd.so

and save and quit.

$ sudo vi /etc/pam.d/lightdm

Edit /etc/pam.d/lightdm (or /etc/pam.d/gdm, if that's what you're using) so that it "@includes" /etc/pam.d/common-auth-nofinger rather than /etc/pam.d/common-auth.