I finally figured out my issue with the fingerprint reader. Since I think the issue was at the hardware/firmware level, I’m moving over here from the Fedora 34 thread.
TL;DR
- fingerprint reader was working fine in Ubuntu 21.04,
- replaced Ubuntu with Fedora 34
- couldn’t enroll my finger - every attempt ended with “enroll-unknown-error”
- discovered it was failing, because the sensor said it was already enrolled - it had never occurred to me to try enrolling one of my nine other fingers
- other fingers enroll fine
Here’s my original comment regarding the issue.
After finally figuring out how to get fprintd into debug mode (here, at the very bottom of the page), the problem seemed obvious.
Aug 08 20:15:49 fedora fprintd[10147]: [goodixmoc] SSM FP_ENROLL_NUM_STATES failed in state 2 with error: Finger is too similar to another>
Aug 08 20:15:49 fedora fprintd[10147]: [goodixmoc] FP_ENROLL_NUM_STATES completed with error: Finger is too similar to another, try use a >
Aug 08 20:15:49 fedora fprintd[10147]: Device reported enroll completion
As you can see above, I found out enroll was failing because the finger I was trying to enroll was already enrolled… but on a brand new Linux install???
This leads me to believe that my fingerprint from enrolling in Ubuntu is stored within the fingerprint reader (or TPM?), which prevented me from enrolling the same finger again.
I was able to enroll any other finger without a problem, but I still don’t know how to delete/unenroll my right index finger from the reader, or get the OS to recognize that it is already enrolled from a previous OS.
Also, in all my troubleshooting, at some point, the ability to enroll fingerprints in Gnome settings disappeared and I can’t figure out how to get it back! So I can enroll and verify with fprintd, but can’t get the OS to use it as an authentication option 