[Fingerforce-devel] libpam-thinkfinger/libpam-fprint and screensavers

[dererk]

On Sun, Mar 02, 2008 at 11:54:12PM +0100, Luca Capello wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> on Philipp Kern's request, I've investigated a bit more how ThinkFinger
> and fprint work with some common screensavers, specifically xlockmore
> and xscreensaver/gnome-screensaver [1].  This is also useful to smooth
> the ThinkFinger -> fprint transition.
> 
> The main document about the situation is on ThinkWiki [2].
> 
> 1) permissions for the USB device
> 
>    Both ThinkFinger and fprint needs special permissions for the USB
>    device, otherwise they cannot access it.  I filed bug #469043 [3]
>    only for ThinkFinger, since questionable is which group should own
>    the USB device, a 'fingerprint' one or a "more general" one like
>    'plugdev'.  As soon as a solution has been found, the same should be
>    included in fprint as well.  Moreover, since this is critical to use
>    the device (and the library) with any program, I'm for adding the
>    udev rule (and the group creation) into the main library package.

Hi Luca!

Believe it or not, yesterday morning I was sharing this concern with
Xerakko.
I was just about to mail team about this exact matter (plus Daniel's
async libusb, that should be discussed soon), what a bloody casuality :-)

I got into account of this while packaging fprint-demo some weeks
before, which runs under non-privileged user, on the contrary pam module
that, of course, runs with privilegies.

I agree w/ you that 'plugdev' meets our need very well, something not
nice it implies refers to the creation of a new udev rule per scanning device
supported by thinkfinger/fprint.
I though it would be quite disgusting at first but, we'll have to upload a
new libfprint pkg with every new supported gadget anyway, so, it's not a
big trouble I think.

Do you see any possible problem by doing this?
It there any kind of impediment to apply to this right now?


Greetings,


Dererk.