[solved]Bluetooth on ThinkPad appears hard blocked but enabled in bios

cfr · 2011-12-22 03:43:33

The kernel boot messages show that the system believes that bluetooth is disabled:

...
[    8.044386] thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad BIOS 8QET53WW (1.14 ), EC unknown
[    8.044389] thinkpad_acpi: Lenovo ThinkPad X121e, model 3045CTO
[    8.045090] thinkpad_acpi: detected a 8-level brightness capable ThinkPad
[    8.046232] thinkpad_acpi: radio switch found; radios are disabled
[    8.046249] thinkpad_acpi: possible tablet mode switch found; ThinkPad in laptop mode
[    8.061377] thinkpad_acpi: rfkill switch tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: radio is blocked
[    8.063203] Registered led device: tpacpi::thinklight
[    8.063253] Registered led device: tpacpi::power
[    8.063520] Registered led device: tpacpi::standby
[    8.063655] Registered led device: tpacpi::thinkvantage
[    8.064331] thinkpad_acpi: Standard ACPI backlight interface available, not loading native one
...

Bluetooth is enabled in te BIOS setup.

The wiki advice includes various suggestions. I'm pretty certain I've tried everything except enabling it in Windows. (I don't have Windows so that's not an option.)

I believe that Fn + F5 should toggle "radios" and I believe this includes at least bluetooth and wifi. However, it seems to have no effect on either judging by output from rfkill. (Both bluetooth and wifi were originally reported soft blocked by rfkill but only bluetooth was reported hard blocked.)

Can anybody suggest what I might read or try next? I'm out of ideas right now. Googling gave some initially promising leads but they all turned out to be somewhat different problems e.g. bluetooth being enabled every other boot whereas mine is never enabled.

Am I misunderstanding how to switch the "radios"? Or what that should do? I've just switched from a PowerBook and hardware switches are a bit of a novelty...

Last edited by cfr (2011-12-22 17:32:29)

cfr · 2011-12-22 17:31:54

This is fixed. I have no idea what fixed it. I've been fiddling on and off for at least a couple of weeks. I double-checked my BIOS settings before booting today but I didn't actually change anything. I've double-checked before, too. But, anyway, for whatever reason rfkill now shows bluetooth as unblocked and an additional entry shows up in the list:

0: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

I'm not sure why bluetooth is entered twice but it definitely looks enabled!

I'm sorry that I cannot report what fixed it as I simply have no idea. The only thing which I changed which might have made a difference is that I started the bluetooth daemon earlier. But surely that shouldn't make a difference? The wiki just says it needs to be after dbus...

Arch Linux

#1 2011-12-22 03:43:33

[solved]Bluetooth on ThinkPad appears hard blocked but enabled in bios

#2 2011-12-22 17:31:54

Re: [solved]Bluetooth on ThinkPad appears hard blocked but enabled in bios

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