systemd[1]: Starting Fingerprint Authentication Daemon...

[Rick Stevens]

On 10/14/2013 01:40 PM, Mateusz Marzantowicz issued this missive:
> On 14.10.2013 22:19, Rick Stevens wrote:
>> On 10/14/2013 01:01 PM, Mateusz Marzantowicz issued this missive:
>>> I don't have any fingerprint reader connected to my machine. Why is
>>> systemd starting this useless daemon in this case? I've heard somewhere
>>> that systemd tends to be more intelligent version of sysvinit that does
>>> only what is really needed to save time and system resources. Here are
>>> two lines from my system logs on F19 machine.
>>>
>>> systemd[1]: Starting Fingerprint Authentication Daemon...
>>> systemd[1]: Started Fingerprint Authentication Daemon.
>>
>> As root:
>>
>>      # systemctl stop fprintd.service
>>      # systemctl disable fprintd.service
>>
>> It doesn't use a lot of resources...leaving it running is not a huge
>> thing but yeah, if you don't have a scanner it is sorta silly.
>
> It reports it's dead and started at the same time.
>
> I know I can disable it but first I'd like to know it a little better.
> Then I'd like to know why systemd doesn't recognize this daemon as
> superflous and what triggers it's activation.

It is enabled by default by the installation of the PAM system just in
case you do have a scanner and wish to use it. There is no reasonable
way that Anaconda could possibly test for every combination of hardware
that could be present at install time. Consequently, innocuous stuff
(like fprintd) get installed to try to cover as many things as possible.

By innocuous, I mean it will start, find out there's nothing to
control, and die. Once it dies, it uses no resources other than the
disk space it takes to hold the files associated with it and the log
entries you've seen.

If you really don't want it to start, either disable it or mask it with
"systemctl mask fprintd.service". If you want it gone completely,
remove both the fprintd-pam and fprintd RPMs:

	yum remove fprintd-pam fprintd

That's all there is to it. If you look really hard at the dmesg and
messages logs, you'll see other stuff that's "superfluous" to _your_
system (e.g. nfslock and the like if you're not using NFS) and to shut
them up you'd do the same thing, "systemctl disable". This is part of
what being a system administrator is all about.
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital    ricks at alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 22643734            Yahoo: origrps2 -
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-                Huked on foniks reely wurked for me!                -
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