Acer Aspire 5 A515-57 — ELAN 04f3:0c4f fingerprint detected but enrollment always fails

Hardware Support
1

Hello,

I have an Acer Aspire 5 A515-57-797B running Zorin OS, and I cannot get the built-in fingerprint reader working.

Fingerprint hardware:

Bus 003 Device 004: ID 04f3:0c4f Elan Microelectronics Corp. ELAN:Fingerprint

The fingerprint reader is detected by Linux, but enrollment always fails.

Running:

fprintd-enroll -f right-index-finger

gives:

Using device /net/reactivated/Fprint/Device/0
Enrolling right-index-finger finger.
Enroll result: enroll-disconnected

I have tried:

  • Zorin's built-in fingerprint settings
  • fprintd
  • the standard Ubuntu/Zorin libfprint package
  • removing custom libfprint installations
  • current upstream libfprint
  • libfprint MR !530 / newer ELAN changes
  • the community ELAN fingerprint driver

The device is consistently detected, but enrollment/verification does not work.

The exact USB ID is:

04f3:0c4f

This appears to be an ELAN driver/libfprint compatibility problem rather than the hardware being completely undetected.

Could someone from the Zorin/Linux community help determine whether there is a newer driver, patch, PPA, firmware update, or experimental libfprint branch that supports this specific 04f3:0c4f sensor?

I would be happy to test an experimental driver or patch.

Thank you.

2

enroll-disconnected on 04f3:0c4f is a known dead end for a lot of people. libfprint lists the id but the open elan driver often just protocol-errors and drops the session. journalctl usually shows something like "driver encountered a protocol error with the device".

the TOD/proprietary packages floating around are mostly aimed at 04f3:0c4b, not 0c4f, so they probably wont magically fix this one. if fprintd-enroll keeps dying at enroll-disconnected after trying upstream and the community elan builds, you are probably stuck waiting on real driver work.

worth one more check: journalctl -u fprintd -b --no-pager | tail -n 40 right after a failed enroll, just to confirm its the protocol error path and not a usb power blip.

1 Like
3

Welcome to the Forum!

  • Are Secure Boot and Fast Boot in BIOS disabled?
  • Does Your System run in Wayland or X11? You can check that with the Command echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE via Terminal.
4

Hi and welcome.

You could give this a try?