Propietary driver for Fingerprint Sensor

I currently have a Dell XPS 13 9300 using Silverblue and I can’t find a way to make the fingerprint sensor work.
Dell released these proprietary drivers for ubuntu and the AUR has made a package by dumping the source inside the debian pkg into /usr.

Similarly, there is this approach for fedora workstation, which also involves modifying /usr.

I think there are ways of making /usr mutable for development purposes, but that should not be the solution (if possible).
My question is, how I can get support for the fingerprint sensor in Silverblue and can this be made easier for non technical users (maybe installing a single rpm-nonfree driver and call it a day?)

3 Likes

Sadly, I believe right now the only way around this issue would be packaging an RPM package.

There is indeed, by setting your ostree to livefs. This will work for that one time, then next install it will be overwritten by the new commit. As was suggested, packaging it into an rpm locally can be used to layer it onto the base commit like any other package. It will be there through updates but will not be updated automatically, so you would have to repeat the rpm build process in order to apply any updates to the device support. Did lsusb not see the scanner?

Yes, lsusb sees the scanner (Goodix FingerPrint)

$ lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0bda:5511 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Integrated_Webcam_HD
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 27c6:533c Shenzhen Goodix Technology Co.,Ltd. FingerPrint
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 8087:0026 Intel Corp. 
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

I am looking into packing a rpm right now but I wish there was an easier solution :sweat_smile:.

Well the driver from Dell at this point would be redundant since the kernel is obviously recognizing the device as indicated by lsusb. Now you need that hardware to talk to your login manager. So, I think that if you go to Gnome Settings > Users and set your user to automatic login then you will be able to assign the scanner to the login method and teach your fingerprints. At least I think that is how it should work, I don’t have a scanner on my desktop to try it with.

I would recommend either building an RPM package out of the sources like the AUR package is doing or creating an RPM package with the pre-built binaries from Dell. You can then overlay this package with rpm-ostree and this will be permanent comparing to livefs changes.

check out the wonderful :slight_smile: manciukic/libfprint-tod-goodix Copr