Fingerprint Reader – How to Install a Fingerprint Reader on Lenovo ThinkPad

fingerprint readerlenovosoftware installationthinkpad

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad with a fingerprint reader:

How to make Ubuntu recognise it and use it for login?

I already tried:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fingerprint/fingerprint-gui
sudo apt-get update

… but this GUI did not recognizes my device. Does anyone knows any other option?

Best Answer

I tried both Fingerprint Gui and FPrint in my Thinkpad W550S. Fingerprint Gui had a nice interface, but was pretty unstable on the login page and sudo and constantly crashed.

FPrint seems more simple, but works very well:

For Ubuntu 20.04 or greater:

sudo apt install libpam-fprintd

For Ubuntu 16.04 or greater:

sudo apt install libpam-fprintd fprint-demo

For Ubuntu 15.04 or less

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:fingerprint/fprint
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libfprint0 fprint-demo libpam-fprintd gksu-polkit

After that, you can test it by running fprint_demo and save the fingerprint with fprintd-enroll. This will automatically make your login screen require a finger swipe instead of a password.

[Update] In some cases you also may need to run:

sudo pam-auth-update

to activate fingerprint reader for elevated privileges for example with sudo

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Unlock keyring with fingerprint reader on login

The whole pourpose of the keyring is to store your passwords and data on your storage device. To do that securely, they must be encrypted with something you know (your password). To unlock the keyring, you must provide the password so that gnome-keyring can decrypt the stored passwords. Your fingerprint can not be used as a password because it is not always the same. Fingerprint readers apply some fuzzy logic to tell if the stored fingerprint matches the read fingerprint and tell yes or no. That's why it can be used for authentication, but not for decryption of stored passwords (unless you have a blank password or would accept storing your master password unencrypted) The only way it could work is if the fingerprint device could store your master password on a chip in plaintext that could only be read if the fingerprint matches. And that's assuming that reading the internal memory/registers of a chip is much much harder than reading your local storage. I really don't know how it is done under windows, and I hope it is not security through obscurity. But if they're not using hardware to do this, they're simply using some obscure (but insecure) method to store your passwords.

Ubuntu – Lenovo finger print reader already claimed

I encountered the same error. Simple solution: Stop the fingerprint daemon.

sudo service fprintd stop

Previously I enrolled fingerprints using the terminal. Later I tried to handle everything in the Settings GUI, where the error occured.