Arch Linux

babel_f1sh

Member

Registered: 2023-09-28

Posts: 36

Bluetooth earbuds not connecting on arch and windows 10 dual boot

I'm having trouble with these bluetooth earbuds (Sony WF-C500) I've paired with arch linux and windows 10. The wiki said that the pairing keys needed to be synced with windows in order to work on both OSes. I used this tool that it linked to automate the process, and it synced them successfully. I restarted bluetooth.service and pulseaudio, but the earbuds failed to connect on arch or windows. They had successfully connected to each when I first paired them. I then tried the manual process listed on the arch wiki page and double checked with the process given here. The keys are identical on both OSes, so I'm not sure what step is missing. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

gcb

Member

Registered: 2014-02-12

Posts: 213

Re: Bluetooth earbuds not connecting on arch and windows 10 dual boot

oh that's interesting tool/hack. I found out about this problem yesterday while debugging codec stuff. But i did the permanent fix, don't use windows

So, your problem i think is that the headphone already "saw" the hardware address with a different key.

After the headphone paired once with one set of keys, it will not forget them and all other attempts it will assume it is a spoof attack and not pair. The only fix is to factory-reset the headphone. All processes to reset are weird, non-standard, and often not mentioned in the manual. Good luck!

edit: there might be undocumented ways to force a "refresh pairing". because i was paired on linux. and then paired on windows. And after that, i could never pair on linux back again. So windows did force it somehow. which would be a security issue, so totally plausible with bluetooth!

Last edited by gcb (2023-09-29 13:46:00)