Sunday, November 4

Setting up Bluetooth

Bluetooth logo

Note: Bluetooth had issues with Kernel 2.6.18. With Kernel 2.6.22, the issues went away. For Kernels above 2.6.18, use this to troubleshoot if you are having similar issues. Otherwise, disregard this as Bluetooth should work out of the box.

The Bluetooth on this machine is finicky. To start, I downloaded gnome-bluetooth and its dependencies from the repository.


>sudo apt-get install gnome-bluetooth


In an anticlimatic frustration, the Bluetooth just didn't work. After scouring around google again, I found that I had to edit the configuration file to enable hidd. To do this I commanded:


> sudo vim /etc/default/bluetooth


Now I changed HIDD_ENABLED = 0 to HIDD_ENABLED = 1

To confirm that Bluetooth can see other items, I tried:


>hidd –search


This auto connects to Bluetooth devices without a prompt. While that is handy, I wanted the ability to scan for devices, aswell. So I tried:


>hcitool scan


I worked! Now to connect to discovered items I tried:


>hidd –connect XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX


Where XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX is the Bluetooth hardware address of discovered device.

It didn't seem to work perfectly and I had some problems where I had to turn off the Bluetooth interface (hci0) and restart Bluetooth in order to get it to recognize my Bluetooth mouse. To do this, I commanded:


>sudo hciconfig hci0 down


>sudo hciconfig hci0 up


>sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart


After that it seems to work fine.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems to work, but in mine didn't!
I have a dell vostro 1500, as yours. I am trying Debain-Parsin on it, but the bluetooth is just killing me..
I've done all you said step by step, bet no answer..
It says no such device.
gnome-bluetooth ok.
the left key of lappy is turned on.
what is the manner??

NC State Alumni said...

Could be a bunch of thing, honestly. You may have a different bluetooth device or the updated kernel could have broken it. If you give me the device information I might be able to help.

Anonymous said...

Cool article as for me. I'd like to read a bit more about that topic. The only thing it would also be great to see on this blog is a few pics of any devices.
Nickolas Stepman
Cell phone jammers