Bluetooth tips and issues in Mageia

[waferhead]

There doesn't seem to be a central thread on bluetooth issues, even though it seems most people have the same issues... so here goes.

First issue I had was that my Asus BT211 dongle wasn't being picked up on boot, but worked fine when plugged in afterwards.
(This made using the BT mouse and keyboard I picked up somewhat problematic, exchanging them for a non-BT Logitech setup solved that)

Fix to prevent having to replug dongle at each reboot was simply to preload the relevant modules so that when USB did the initial scan it was autodetected properly.

Added bluetoothd to top of /etc/rc.local since it doesn't appear to be set up as a service.
It should probably be started earlier.

Added to /etc/modprobe.preload
bluetooth
rfcomm
bnep
l2cap


Not sure if all are really required, but that gives the desired result of having bluetooth working on boot.

Second bit of fun--- bluedevil is horribly broken, and has been for years based on Mandriva bug reports, with no fixes.
You can get it to work most of the time, but if your device isn't a mouse or keyboard, or sometimes just randomly, it will refuse to configure it, or configure it and promptly forget about it.
The work around (for years on Mandriva) is simply to use Blueman, the GTK/Gnome bluetooth manager.
No, it won't load automatically, but it will integrate in the KDE system tray once manually launched.

The good news is that bluedevils bizarre issues have supposedly been fixed upstream in the latest KDE release, so hopefully Mageia will have a fix RSN.

Googling for fixes on the Linux bluetooth subsystems is almost useless, there have been major recent revisions, and different distros use different setups... Mandriva>Mageia have pushed the init scripts into udev rules, so it should "automagically" work... Unfortunately that also makes it almost impossible for mere mortals to troubleshoot when it doesn't.

My one outstanding issue is trying to get a USConverters USB<>serial adapter to autodetect AND auto attach... /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf seems to be totally ignored by the current bt setup, so binding the device based on address has no effect.

Using blueman, it is seen, but manual intervention is required every time to connect, and I usually have to delete it, redetect/pair/trust then configure on every power cycle of the device... which is BS, and would be unnecessary if /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf was actually being honored.

Does anyone have a how-to or link of what is needed to grok the udev.rules maze to get this working as it should?

[marja]

Thanks a lot for the tips you gave! I'll come back here when I want to start using BT

I hope someone passes by who can answer your question(s)

[specialworld83]

Resolv problem bluetooth asus-bt211 for wiki page http://www.codelinsoft.it/sito/?wpwtds_article=bluetooth-asus-bt211-for-mageia-2

[doktor5000]

Maybe the comment could be a bit more descriptive Above links points to setup instructions and a firmware download for Asus BT211 bluetooth dongle on Mageia 2.
Sadly it doesn't say where the firmware comes from originally and under what license it is ...

[specialworld83]

Firmware proprietary and translate english wiki page under contruction.

This firmware download for debian and testing for mageia 2. Testing successful

[doktor5000]

Anyways, thanks for the link and those instructions, appreciated