Checking Whether Your Fingerprint Reader is Supported
Not all fingerprint readers are supported for fingerprint gui. To check whether your reader is supported,
- Open Terminal
- Run 'lsusb' command
- Locate the ID of the finger print reader. For example my 'lsusb' output contains the following line,
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 138a:0017 Validity Sensors, Inc. Fingerprint Reader
So the ID of my fingerprint reader is 138a:0017 (as highlighted above)
- Go to https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint and check whether the fingerprint reader is supported by searching for your ID from above step
In the command line run the following commands
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:fingerprint/fingerprint-gui
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install libbsapi policykit-1-fingerprint-gui fingerprint-gui
Setting up the Fingerprints
- Run 'fingerprint-gui' in the command line to open fingerprint-gui
- Select the finger print reader driver and click next
- Select a finger and click next to configure the fingerprint of that finger
- You'll be prompted to use that finger on the fingerprint reader for 5 times. Once this is done the fingerprint of that fnger will be registered
- Repeat for all 10 fingers
- Once all fingers are registered go to settings tab and test the fingerprint authentication for "sudo". You sould see 'Authentication successful.' in the text field if the finger is recognized.
Note: Even though you can log in using fingerprint after setting up, It won't unlock the gnome keyring (which requires the password). Fingerprint GUI has an option to use a external drive with encrypted password which will unlock the keyring. But it is not always practical. So my personal approach is to use the password to log in and then use finger print to unlock the computer and to authenticate for sudo.
