As of today in hirsute no longer possible to use open-fprintd

[Jonathan Kamens]

It appears that fprintd-clients was replaced with libpam-fprintd, and libpam-fprintd can't be installed without fprintd.

I can't use fprintd because it's incompatible with my fingerprint reader (Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen). Prior to today I was successfully using open-fprintd.

Now, however, I had to uninstall open-fprintd and install libpam-fprintd to be able to log in (see bug 1917175), and I am unable to put open-fprintd back because that will force fprintd to uninstall, which will force libpam-fprintd to uninstall, which will make me unable to log in because pam_fprintd.so will disappear.

This isn't great.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 21.04
Package: fprintd 1.90.9-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.10.0-14.15-generic 5.10.11
Uname: Linux 5.10.0-14-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu59
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Feb 27 17:16:27 2021
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-08-16 (561 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" - Release amd64 (20190416)
SourcePackage: fprintd
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to hirsute on 2021-02-20 (6 days ago)

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Possibly related to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm3/+bug/1917175

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The stack we are supporting is the fprintd one, ideally your reader would work there

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you give some details on your reader? It could be possible to enable it using https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/3v1n0/libfprint-tod-vfs0090

[omriasta (omriasta)]

I have the 6th gen x1 carbon as well and am pretty sure it is the 0090 you referenced, I will try that later today.
I think the issue the original poster was stating is a new dependency that does not allow us to have just the package we need for open-fprintd.

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

>Could you give some details on your reader? It could be possible to enable it using https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/3v1n0/libfprint-tod-vfs0090

Could you give some details on (a) how I can "give some details on [my] reader" and (b) how I can "enable it using..."?

>I think the issue the original poster was stating is a new dependency that does not allow us to have just the package we need for open-fprintd.

Yes. Although I would love if the fprintd provided by Ubuntu supported my reader, this particular bug was about the fact that there shouldn't be dependencies in the OS packages that prevent people from being able to use open-fprintd.

[omriasta (omriasta)]

My bad....the referenced package does not apply to the reader on Thinkpad X1 carbon 6th gen.
The hardware can be seen by running lsusb:
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 06cb:009a Synaptics, Inc. Metallica MIS Touch Fingerprint Reader

[omriasta (omriasta)]

I was able to get it back up and running.
First, make sure that you re-enable the repositories and sources for open-fprintd(groovy for now as there is no package for hirsuite).
Then use apt to install open-fprintd, fprintd-clients and python3-validity.
This should remove fprintd and libpam-fprintd. After that is done you should be able to see the login using fingerprint in ubuntu settings->Users.
To get it working with sudo I just had to rerun sudo pam-auth-update and re-enable fingerprint.

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

If you want to get support for such 3rd party drivers, you should ask who produces them to provide a TOD driver that will be installable in ubuntu without having to deal with other libfprint forks.

See: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/3v1n0/libfprint-tod-example-driver

This is done for https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/3v1n0/libfprint-tod-vfs0090 and my PPA is exposing the driver in such way for some time now: https://launchpad.net/~3v1n0/+archive/ubuntu/libfprint-vfs0090/