thinkfinger: long pause before and after PAM prompt

[Marius Gedminas]

In jaunty, it takes 5 seconds (!) after I type sudo before the 'Password or swipe finger' prompt shows up. Then if I type my password it takes 11 more seconds (!) until I get a root shell.

The same pauses are present in the login prompt at the text virtual consoles.

If the thinkfinger is busy showing a prompt in one terminal, and I run sudo again in a second terminal, that second terminal gives me a plain [sudo] prompt immediately (no 5 second pause!) and then a root shell ~4 seconds after I press Enter. Those 4 seconds could easily be root's .bash_profile running /etc/bash_completion, I haven't checked.

Nevertheless, the pauses before and after the prompt are missing when thinkfinger is not being used, which is why I'm filing this bug report against it.

(I could double-check by disabling thinkfinger altogether in /etc/pam.d, but it's 3 am and I'm afraid to break my system by introducing a typo or something).

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: libpam-thinkfinger 0.3+r118-0ubuntu4~ppa2
ProcEnviron:
 LC_CTYPE=lt_LT.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=lt_LT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: thinkfinger
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-server i686
UnreportableReason: This is not a genuine Ubuntu package

[sanktnelson (launchpad-maibaums)]

confirmed here. delay is gone after uninstalling thinkfinger.

[Diogo Matsubara (matsubara)]

I'm having the same problem. This might be a dupe of bug 311732

[Matt (matthieu-cabos)]

Also confirmed on a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.04 on my Dell XPS M1530.
When running the "tf-tool --acquire" or "tf-tool --verify" command, the delay can easily be traced to the "Initializing" phase of thinkfinger execution.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

FWIW that 4 second pause on bash startup I was seeing with or without thinkfinger? It was bash parsing my ~/.bash_history (> 100000 lines).

The other pauses are thinkfinger's fault, see http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=519631 which also links to http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12301 and mentions there's a patch.

[Andrei Emeltchenko (andrei-emeltchenko-finik)]

Hei I had the same problems after upgrade to Jaunty. I had to remove thinkfinger :-(

[Tobias Krais (tux-spam)]

Hi together,

I had the same issue and even had randomly gdm crashes because of it.

Here my solution: add the following line to your package manager and install the thinkfinger updates:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jon-oberheide/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

This solves the long pause and also the issue that you have to press enter after swiping your finger ;-)

Please add these packages to the official repos!

Greetings, Tobias

[raphael (raphoun)]

Thanks Tobias it'ss working like a charm for me!

Raphaël

[Tobias Krais (tux-spam)]

Hi Raphael,

nice to hear, hoping this helps even more.

Greetings, Tobias

[Ahmed Elayan (whateverian)]

Hi Tobias Krais,

Had the same problem and your solution is working fine. THANKS

[Michael Hanson (mhanson)]

thanks, worked a charm

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

Unfortunately Jon's package (libpam-thinkfinger version 0.3+r118-0ubuntu5~ppa1) does NOT fix the problem for me:

1. sudo -s
2. 5 second pause
3. "Password or swipe finger: "

now there are two alternatives:

4a. Type password, press Enter
5a. 5 second pause
6a. root shell

and:

4b. Swipe finger.
5b. root shell

The pause in step 2 always exists, and the pause in step 5a is also not fixed :(

[Andrei Emeltchenko (andrei-emeltchenko-finik)]

Hei I have just checked latest libpam-thinkfinger and it is still not working.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

bug still present in karmic (libpam-thinkfinger 0.3+r118-0ubuntu4)

[Valentin Atepalikhin (valentin-atep)]

Had the same issue on my Gentoo system after an upgrade.
The solution mentioned here: http://www.joaoff.com/2009/06/30/making-thinkfinger-faster/
worked fine for me.