Arch Linux

z0br1s7

Member

Registered: 2021-10-24

Posts: 3

"No default controller available" even though bluetooth is ACTIVE.

End goal: be able to connect my bluetooth headset(boAt Rockerz 255 in-Ear/Redmi Earbuds 2C) to laptop. (yeah, i discovered this is an age old problem, although i just couldn't manage to find a working solution even with the wealth of info out there.)

Setup: arch with xfce4 DE.

What i tried:

sudo modprobe btusb && sudo systemctl start bluetooth

Also:

bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service
    Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bluet
    Active: active (running) since Sun 2021-10-24
      Docs: man:bluetoothd(8)
  Main PID: 1558 (bluetoothd)
    Status: "Running"
     Tasks: 1 (limit: 9378)
    Memory: 2.0M
       CPU: 54ms
    CGroup: /system.slice/bluetooth.service
            └─1558 /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd
Oct 24 08:24:22 inferno systemd[1]: Starting Bluetooth service...
Oct 24 08:24:22 inferno bluetoothd[1558]: Bluetooth daemon 5.62
Oct 24 08:24:22 inferno systemd[1]: Started Bluetooth service.
Oct 24 08:24:22 inferno bluetoothd[1558]: Starting SDP server
Oct 24 08:24:22 inferno bluetoothd[1558]: Bluetooth management interface 1.21 initialized

Then i try sudo bluetoothctl :

[➜  ~ Downloads]$ sudo bluetoothctl
[sudo] password: 
Agent registered
[bluetooth]# power on
No default controller available
[bluetooth]# scan on
No default controller available
[bluetooth]# list
[bluetooth]# 

checked rfkill:

[➜  ~ Downloads]$ sudo rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no

(^this doesn't have info about the bluetooth driver. dunno why)

Have spent hours on this problem since yesterday, there are so many links i looked up for that i just can't segregate them and post the relevant ones here... nevertheless, none of the solutions seem to work for me.

https://superuser.com/questions/1645978 … 54_1645978

^ This user seemed to have a similar problem, but presumably they solved it by installing bluez-hid2hci but that doesn't work for me.

Note that my laptop uses REALTEK 8723DE PCIe adapter

02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723DE 802.11b/g/n PCIe Adapter
	DeviceName: WLAN
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 8319
	Kernel driver in use: rtw_8723de
	Kernel modules: rtw88_8723de

(^don't know if this is really a problem, i learnt that some chips don't have support for linux drivers, but some articles say that my chip does, also i can use WiFI-posting this from the same laptop)

and this is some anomaly i noticed using dmesg:

[➜  ~ Downloads]$ sudo dmesg | grep firmware
[sudo] password: 
[    1.115864] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] Finished loading DMC firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin (v1.4)
[   14.427032] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2

Also I must admit that i am a newb. Made a switch from windows, although the bluetooth worked seamlessly on windows. i learnt about ndiswrapper and tried installing it, but it is throwing errors during the build process too, is it the right way? Do i have to do something in the BIOS settings ? Or am i missing something? What must I do to reach the end goal?

Thanks a lot for taking time to read this!

Last edited by z0br1s7 (2021-11-17 13:55:41)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,300

Re: "No default controller available" even though bluetooth is ACTIVE.

Please wrap command outputs in [ code ] tags

Ndiswrapper is only for wifi compat don't pursue that further if your wifi is working.  As for bluetooth, since realtek wifi/bluetooth support is often spotty it's very likely that support isn't quite there yet, what's your output for

lsusb -t #Needs usbutils
sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'btusb|bluetooth|rtw'

Last edited by V1del (2021-10-24 10:25:17)

z0br1s7

Member

Registered: 2021-10-24

Posts: 3

Re: "No default controller available" even though bluetooth is ACTIVE.

Please wrap command outputs in [ code ] tags

Noted! Editing the question and I'll keep that in mind...

for lsusb -t

[➜  ~  bin]$ lsusb -t
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/6p, 10000M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/12p, 480M
    |__ Port 2: Dev 4, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=, 480M
    |__ Port 5: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
    |__ Port 5: Dev 2, If 1, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M

for sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'btusb|bluetooth|rtw'

[➜  ~  bin]$ sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'btusb|bluetooth|rtw'
[sudo] password: 
[   13.664557] rtw_8723de 0000:02:00.0: Firmware version 48.0.0, H2C version 0
[   13.748342] rtw_8723de 0000:02:00.0 wlo1: renamed from wlan0
[   29.933190] rtw_8723de 0000:02:00.0: start vif 70:66:55:32:27:39 on port 0
[   29.934639] rtw_8723de 0000:02:00.0: stop vif 70:66:55:32:27:39 on port 0
[   30.083270] rtw_8723de 0000:02:00.0: start vif 92:e4:0b:de:cc:5b on port 0
[   32.340680] rtw_8723de 0000:02:00.0: stop vif 92:e4:0b:de:cc:5b on port 0
[   32.485962] rtw_8723de 0000:02:00.0: start vif 70:66:55:32:27:39 on port 0
[   34.134059] rtw_8723de 0000:02:00.0: sta 60:63:4c:84:7f:66 joined with macid 0
[  258.701910] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[  258.701977] NET: Registered PF_BLUETOOTH protocol family
[  258.701980] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[  258.701988] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[  258.701992] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[  258.702001] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[  258.722397] usbcore: registered new interface driver btusb
[  313.191779] audit: type=1130 audit(1635068757.123:109): pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 msg='unit=bluetooth comm="systemd" exe="/usr/lib/systemd/systemd" hostname=? addr=? terminal=? res=success'
[  313.235881] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[  313.235889] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[  313.235899] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized

Thanks for the follow up!

Last edited by z0br1s7 (2021-11-17 13:57:16)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,300

Re: "No default controller available" even though bluetooth is ACTIVE.

Hmm most of the sources I find suggest that this should just work with recentish kernels. Maybe give the updated patchset you can get from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rtw88-dkms-git/ a shot

z0br1s7

Member

Registered: 2021-10-24

Posts: 3

Re: "No default controller available" even though bluetooth is ACTIVE.

I tried the patch but I just can't get it to work.

Also, a thing I ve noticed is that hcitool scan returns no such device, (could also see that when doing sudo rfkill list that it only returned status for wlan0.

I also tried dual booting with ubuntu 20.4 and I have the same issue with Bluetooth... So it's not just a problem with arch.

I guess my best best would be to get a bluetooth adapter(I looked up and found the ones that were supported by the linux firmware)... TP-link UD400 is the one available in my area and it does seem to work according to the sources I looked up... I ll try and get that and check whether it solves the issue or not.