Lenovo finger print reader already claimed

Question

I installed the fingerprint reader successfully on Ubuntu 16.04 and ran fprintd-enroll with apparent success. When I rebooted, the fingerprint was requested but failed 3 times and then asked for my password. I thought I'd try enroll again, but it failed before it finished and I had to control c out. Logged out and in and tried again, but now I consistently get a failure "device already claimed." How can I clear that claim so I can try again? And/or, how do I uninstall it? Sorry, I'm a noob with Linux.

I installed on my T410 using: sudo apt install libpam-fprintd as shown on page: How to install a fingerprint reader on Lenovo ThinkPad

Solution

I encountered the same error. Simple solution: Stop the fingerprint daemon.

sudo service fprintd stop

Previously I enrolled fingerprints using the terminal. Later I tried to handle everything in the Settings GUI, where the error occured.

Comments

[Admin]

How did you install the software? Please edit and describe what you installed and how. If you followed some tutorial please link it.

[DaveGadgeteer]

Thanks. Sounds like good advice. Too bad the keyring doesn't use the finger print too.

[DaveGadgeteer]

The purge resulted in this error--how do I get past this?E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable) E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?