Plasma fun with fprintd 🙈

[expat]

New laptop, Asus Vivobook M1402IA. Has the fingerprint sensor nestled in the corner of the touchpad. 6.1.25-1 kernel, Plasma 5.27.4, Elan Microelectronics sensor. Read the various threads here about enabling it then various on Arch. Installed per the Arch instructions, fprintd. This appears in Settings/Users/me and allows me to register fingerprints without problems so the driver must work, no? Edited /etc/pam.d/ (various) files per the Arch wiki, following their procedure. On one edit the result was that I could no longer log into the system after editing the etc/pam.d/sddm file. ctrl+alt+f2 and nano’ed the file to restore the system. A cursory inspection of journal after failed login attempts with the fingerprint sensor didnt yield anything helpful. Also tried enabling fprintd.service with systemctl and received a “failed to enable unit-connection timed out” message. So-- as the message so appropriately states under Settings/users/ me “Logging in to the system with your fingerprint is not yet supported”…also note that editing etc/pam.d/su with the appropriate lines from the Arch wiki did not even yield me being able to execute the su password via my fingerprint with the sensor. My 2 questions for the forum are 1) is the Elan sensor so much garbage that it fails to yield the same result when one scans their finger? and 2) Is it that fingerprint logins are dependent in which desktop is installed rather than the disro itself? I know other people where I live that have laptops that login via a fingerprint scanner on other distros without problems albeit with a different brand of laptop. Curious about whether I need consider a different desktop to get fingerprint logins enable or…
Regards & thanks for the read.

[leledumbo]

@expat

This appears in Settings/Users/me and allows me to register fingerprints without problems so the driver must work, no?

No, it just the driver recognizes it. That’s it, no guarantee of working. You may even be able to enroll but can never verify.

@expat

s the Elan sensor so much garbage that it fails to yield the same result when one scans their finger?

Elan makes a bunch of different sensors. Some work, some don’t. Luck matters.

@expat

Is it that fingerprint logins are dependent in which desktop is installed rather than the disro itself?

To be precise: It’s DM dependant. A DE may provide a GUI configurator but the inner working is in the DM. Distro does NOT matter.

[expat]

Thanks very much for the explanation, much appreciated. The fun continues…