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zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,221

Website

[SOLVED] cannot 'up' my bluetooth-device

Hi,

On my macbook pro (v5.5) i only recently started tinkering with bluetooth. I remember that I got it to pair with my phone the first time I tried bluez/blueman out. Next time I tried, it didn't work anymore - probably due to an upgrade in the mean time.

My symptoms:
I followed the wiki and installed the bluez-package and blueman-package.
I start bluetooth in my rc.conf, without errormessage.
Then I start openbox and tint2 with 'ck-launch-session blueman-applet' in my autostart.sh
I immediately get a warning that my bluetooth device is not up and all the options in the blueman-applet menu are grey.

When I do:
hciconfig
I get one device, hci0, which is 'DOWN'

when I do:
hciconfig hci0 up
I get an 'unknown error (error 132)' - the device stays 'DOWN'

On the Ubuntu-forums I get similar errors, but the solution doesn't work. It could be rfkill-related in the kernel.

Last edited by zenlord (2009-12-02 09:48:49)

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,221

Website

Re: [SOLVED] cannot 'up' my bluetooth-device

SOLVED: this is caused by the new rfkill-handling in kernel 2.6.31.

So in my /etc/rc.local I set
'rfkill unblock 0'

And my bluetooth works. I have only tested this for five minutes, but during testing I had a very bad wifi connection. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: [SOLVED] cannot 'up' my bluetooth-device

Probably worth mentioning that the above solution requires the rfkill package from the AUR.

I haven't encountered this issue (yet) myself, but it seems to me you could get the same result by setting the default_state parameter for the rfkill module. I could be wrong though.[1]

[1] Standard disclaimer - it's never actually happened.

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,221

Website

Re: [SOLVED] cannot 'up' my bluetooth-device

Yes, I read the same solution on other forums. But in order to quickly find out if my device was 'soft blocked', I installed the AUR-package.

You're right, as usual: a 'cat 1 >> /proc/<something something>' would be way more KISS. Even setting the module parameter 'default_state' seems like a better choice than mine.

On the other hand I'm planning on also installing 'rfkill-applet' so that both me and my girlfriend can *easily* switch on the bluetooth and wifi on my laptop

/EDIT: since you're on the subject: there are a lot of people/distro's affected by this, but I didn't read anywhere that this is a bug - do you know if this is the default behaviour from now on for rfkil, or that this is really a bug that will be squashed in the (near) future?

Last edited by zenlord (2009-12-02 13:19:24)