Fingerprint Reader with Gnome

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1

What’s the trick to getting the fingerprint reader to work right with Gnome? I enabled fprintd. The Gnome settings panel under my user does not have the usual configuration option for adding a fingerprint.

If I use fprintd-enroll, I can add one, but GDM acts weird. It immediately says fingerprint didn’t work (as stated here (Gnome login fingerprint issue), but then does let me in.

But I still can’t manage my fingerprints in settings.

If I try and include the config for tod: services.fprintd.tod.enable I am told that option doesn’t exist, even though the docs say it does, from what I found.

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2

Also, gdm won’t let me type in a password. In the past, with Gnome fingerprint setup, I can either do fingerprint or type. But the type in box is disabled.

3

I don’t have any answers for you, sorry — but it would be useful if you can include:

  • what channel you’re on (22.05, -unstable, or something else); the difference between these is at its largest right now, just before the next release.
  • what hardware you’re using
4

Unstable, up to date.
Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 Gen 9

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5

One last bump… am I the only one with this problem?

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6

fprintd is a dbus service which starts on demand, but apprently not fast enough. To have it running at all times, just start it at boot.

Apart from that, the general configuration for the fingerprint sensor on my Dell XPS 13 9310 is the following:

{
  services.fprintd = {
    enable = true;
    package = pkgs.fprintd-tod;
    tod = {
      enable = true;
      driver = pkgs.libfprint-2-tod1-goodix;
    };
  };
}
7

Thanks for the tip. I enabled fprintd as recommended, doesn’t seem to have changed my behavior.

Here’s a short clip of the issue. It’s strange. Fingerprint works. It just tells me it didn’t, as soon as I select my username for login. Plus, I cannot type in the password field no matter what.

8

Got some progress. I got the Gnome Settings User panel to recognize my fingerprint setup. I had to enable the right driver (which is weird that it worked at all without it).
For the Thinkpad Carbon X1 Gen 9 it is:

    fprintd = {
      enable = true;
      package = pkgs.fprintd-tod;
      tod = {
        enable = true;
        driver = pkgs.libfprint-3-tod1-vfs0090;
      };
    };

For GDM not allowing a password at all, found this bug with other reports. So it’s not just me.

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