[fprint] successful installation on HP-Compaq nc6400

[Daniel Drake]

Alexander Danilov wrote:
> Thanks to the author for fprint, it was really long waiting software. I install libfprint and 
> pam_fprint on my HP-Compaq nc6400 (Debian etch) with AuthenTec 2501 fingerprint reader.
> I can say - it works.
> But there are some notes, the patch for old imagemagick was _very_ useful, enroll and verify works,
> but need some documentation about how to setup usb device (set right permission) with udev 

Please could you follow up with your distro about both of these?
Firstly, the imagemagick being shipped in debian is more than 2 years old.
Secondly, your distro should handle USB device permissions for you, 
otherwise there is a whole range of hardware beyond fingerprint readers 
that will not work -- one example being scanners through SANE.

> without it, because running enroll using sudo is not a good idea.

Agreed, I've never suggested anyone do this.

On Gentoo the process is as follows: for any user you wish to have 
generic access to USB devices like this, put them in the "usb" group. 
That's it -- nothing more. Then everything "just works" out of the box. 
I would think the same is true for other distributions too.

> The second note about pam, i have 
> seen pam configuration for version 0.99 at wiki page, but it doesn't work for my case, my pam is 
> v0.79. I try to setup pam to use password or fingerprint and check it using ssh to localhost, at the
> first ssh ask me for password, and then wait for fingerprint(valid or invalid), and let me to log in 
> only if I input right password, not matter of what finger I use for login.

If you do succeed, please let me know and I will document it. Or, even 
better, choose a username for the wiki and I'll give you an account and 
you can document it yourself.

Sorry that I can't be more help here -- I have almost zero experience 
with PAM, I installed it for the first time approximately 15 minutes 
before trying to write pam_fprint :)

> Small wish: it will be good to have some options to turn on debug messages, as a good example I can
> recommend to look at pam_usb.

Fancy writing a patch for this? With so much to do on this young 
project, these kind of things take low priority for me.

Thanks for the feedback!
Daniel