HOWTO: Fingerprint reading in Ubuntu with fprint

[andreselsuave]

Oh! Sorry, I forgot to post the solution, yeah ^_^. For sure I will share it with you. But it is not a software problem.

The problem is that it is difficult to validate the fingers. My fingerprint reader is Authentec. The problem was that fprint recognized it 1 out of 20 times, and it was driving me mad.

Now I have improved it to 1 out of 4-5 times. The thing is that when u scan your finger you have to try to swipe it in the same angle, with the same speed, and applying the same pressure as you did when you enrolled it. It is a bit annoying, but I imagine that with practice I will be able to succeed validating it everytime.

Thats it =)

[tgeer43]

Is it an Authentec AES2501? That's a fairly common model and what I have in my HP notebook. But in my case the validation is extremely accurate and I wasn't even fussy about how I enrolled my digits and I don't have to be particular when swiping them day to day.
This may sound overly simple but have you tried cleaning the scanning surface? I don't think it's any inherent problem with the design of the reader.

tgeer

[andreselsuave]

Hmm, I haven't :/

Do you know what to clean it with? Maybe alcohol or distilled water?

thankyou

[master_kernel]

Updated the post. Added aes2501-wy driver requisite.

[master_kernel]

sudo_fprint_demo works grrrrrreat, but when i try fprint_demo it goes to the screen where i would enroll my prints, but it won't let me enroll them, the buttons are just gray...

What did i do wrong? i tried the troubleshoot directions that were given in the beginning, but that didn't work either... and it says

Error opening directory in my home folder...

Permission DENIED!

and then after that is won't let me do anything in terminal.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I need the exact output.

[Zuke24]

This is awesome, and seems to be working great for me!

I only have two issues;
1) In the Gnome GUI, it's not always prompting me for a fingerprint. This wouldn't be an issue, except it's no longer prompting me for a password either. This isn't an issue in Terminal where it prompts for a fingerpring from Upek FingerPrint Reader (how exact it is!). If I can remember everything I need privileges for, it's not a huge issue; "Hmm, Synaptics isn't opening, and I know it usually asks for a password, so I'll scan the next time I open it."

How can I get this prompt back?

2) The keychain doesn't seem to go off the common-auth. When I first start up, I'm immediately met with a prompt to unlock the keychain. My fingerprint doesn't cut it. Is there a way to bypass this?

I'm using 64-bit Jaunty with the latest daily builds. I have a Lenovo X61 and a Upek Finger Scanner. Thanks!

[pitbullthe1st]

Hi,

I have a question, I have installed this and it all seams to work fine but is there a way to get the finger prints to save in a different place? As I have an encrypted home dir and therefore when I login it says it can't find a finger print image. However after login it works from stand by and in terminal and like it should in everything else that I have tried if in.

Is there a work around for this?

P.S. I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 alpha6 on a dell XPS M1530

[emilianbogatu]

run as root ("sudo -s" in terminal): chown -R $your_username:$your_username /home/$your_username/.fp*

[pitbullthe1st]

How will this work? From what I understand this will change the permission of any file/folder starting with '.fp' but before I log in, this is encrypted and therefore not accessible until it is decrypted.

Am I right in this assumption and if not then how will it work?

[emilianbogatu]

Indeed. The files should be available before decryption.
To my knowledge you can (1) use a whole encrypted partition (probably mounted in $HOME=/home/yourusername only after succesfull login) or (2) use directory/files encryption.
(1) I'll asume the mounting point is $HOME=/home/yourusername. Before proper auth, $HOME probably is empty. Just copy .fp* directory (and maybe other needed files) from mounted encrypted fs elsewere, unmount this fs and copy .fp* under $HOME (should be empty if encrypted fs is not mounted) and give proper rights. Dirty but should work; after auth encrypted fs is mounted other existent files, before auth the needed files will be available on the same path.
(2)If some kind of directory encryption is used (not a whole encrypted partition mounted on $HOME) you should not encrypt the entire $HOME.
But ... if you are using encryption - really sensitive information I guess - looks like you are giving direct access to your files based on fingerprint?!