Fingerprint recognition login and encrypted home don't work together

[Gilles Gravier]

Hi!

If you plan to try, like myself, to use fingerprint recognition, while
using encrypted home directory, then you should know that it just
doesn't work.

There are 2 issues at hand, here...

1) The .fprint directory, which stores the fingerprint database of a
user, is stored in the encrypted home directory. So is not available to
the greeter application to recognize prints. This is what causes the
"Could not locate any suitable fingerprints matched with available
hardware" message on the login prompt.

2) If you decide to copy these files to /home/YourUser from a command
line, without the encrypted home there, then you can actually login from
the greeter session, with recognized prints. But then a second
phenomenon appears. Since you didn't type your password, there is
nothing to unlock your home directory encryption key... which means it
doesn't get decrypted... which means you get kicked out of your session
immediately as no configuration files are available.

Bummer...

Gilles