Enabling finger print login in ubuntu Linux
if you have a finger print in your laptop and you want to use it for finger authentication follow these steps :
1- use the hard way and compile the thinkfinger software from http://thinkfinger.sourceforge.net/
or
install it from repository apt-get install libpam-thinkfinger libthinkfinger0 thinkfinger-tools
2- run this command tf-tool –acquire to create a finger print .bir file
3- move the .bir to the pam thinkfinger folder mv .thinkfinger.bir /etc/pam_thinkfinger/<user id>.bir
4- run this command sudo /usr/lib/pam-thinkfinger/pam-thinkfinger-enable
5- Modify the file /etc/pam.d/common-auth so it looks like :
#
# /etc/pam.d/common-auth – authentication settings common to all services
#
# This file is included from other service-specific PAM config files,
# and should contain a list of the authentication modules that define
# the central authentication scheme for use on the system
# (e.g., /etc/shadow, LDAP, Kerberos, etc.). The default is to use the
# traditional Unix authentication mechanisms.
#
auth sufficient pam_thinkfinger.so
auth required pam_unix.so try_first_pass nullok_secure
it works for me
ubuntu 9.10
November 21, 2009 at 2:49 pm
At first i thought of your instructions as beeing a great way of locking yourself out from the computer, i tried to log out and then right back in again after installing and configuring, but it wouldn’t take my fingerprint, nor my password. But it worked flawlessly after a reboot. Thank you for the howto. Any idea of how to register multiple prints for same user?
March 24, 2010 at 11:36 pm
It is incredible complex to me, newbie to install something simple as a fingerprintreader. Why do Linux folks use this crazy commands and why isn’t there a simple installer? Unbelievable.
However, Thanks to this description (others only refer on setting the software sources, but forget the Ubuntu 9.10) I managed to finish step 1.
At step 2. It says “bir_file defaults to ~/.thinkfinger.bir.” However I could not find any .bir file on my system, so step 3 will fail of course..
where did I go wrong?