Goodix 550a - vendor TOD blob route (USB 27c6:550a)
Status: Works, but only via a proprietary vendor driver. Nothing open exists.
This entry hosts no code. It documents the only route that currently works for this sensor: Goodix's closed-source driver, shipped by Lenovo as a libfprint TOD (Touch OEM Driver) module. The blob is not LGPL-2.1 and is not redistributed here. Cataloguing it is not an endorsement - see caveats.
Very common: Lenovo ThinkPad E14/E15 and ThinkBook models of that generation.
What was broken
Upstream libfprint has no driver for 27c6:550a, and no reverse-engineering
effort has produced a working open driver. The goodixtls work covers other
Goodix families (see 27c6:55b4, 27c6:5110)
but not this one.
The TOD route
libfprint supports out-of-tree binary drivers through TOD. Lenovo publishes the Goodix TOD module for Ubuntu, and community packaging wraps it for other distros.
| Distro | Route |
|---|---|
| Ubuntu / Debian | Lenovo's driver package, libfprint-2-tod1-goodix (Lenovo E14 Gen 4 Ubuntu driver bundle, r1slg01w.zip) |
| Arch | AUR libfprint-2-tod1-goodix (packages the same Lenovo bundle) |
| Fedora | community RPM packaging of the same blob, e.g. antidoid/libfprint-tod-goodix-0.0.9 (MIT packaging around the proprietary driver) |
You also need a TOD-enabled libfprint (libfprint-tod on Arch,
libfprint-2-2 + TOD on Ubuntu), because stock libfprint does not load TOD
modules.
After install, restart fprintd and enroll as usual; PAM setup is standard, see docs/BUILD.md.
Caveats
- Closed-source binary handling your biometric data, with no audit possible.
- x86-64 only, and tied to specific libfprint TOD ABI versions: a libfprint update can break it until the packaging catches up.
- Lenovo publishes it for their own hardware; it is not a general-purpose driver.
- If you would rather have no vendor blob in your auth stack, there is currently no alternative for this sensor. A reverse-engineering effort would be very welcome.
Tested on
- Widely reported working on Ubuntu (Lenovo's own packaging) and Arch (AUR).
- Fedora via community RPM packaging.
- Reports with model + distro + libfprint version are welcome.
License note
The Goodix TOD driver is proprietary. This hub hosts only LGPL-2.1 code, so nothing from it is mirrored here; the packaging repos linked above carry their own licenses (the packaging, not the blob).