Ok guys, BLUETOOTH HELP!!!

Question

ive been trying to install the bluetooth for my Toshiba satellite x200 but this is nuts i have installed bluez and all other bluez related things and even installed blueman too but i got nothing, kdebluetooth was installed but does nothing when i click on the icon...how in the world do i install bluetooth!??

Answer 1

Bluetooth is a pain for me with bluez 4.x because of the lack of a hcid.conf file.  Maybe network.conf and main.conf work just as well, but the documentation for it is horrid. 
For example, where can I put a default passkey in?  Who knows.  In 3.x is was easy... if the option is even supported in 4.x it's not documented (or atleast, not documented well). 
Ever been to the bluez website?
Check out the FAQ page for some laughs... http://www.bluez.org/faq/
Seriously, I get more information off of web page placeholders. (i.e. http://bluez/)
So, nothing works like it should all the time.  When Bluez 4.x goes bad, you better pray for a miracle because not many people know what's going on with it -- and those who do ain't saying much.
Anyways, time to try and be helpful... I googled "toshiba 200x satelite" and got a laptop...  So, first off we'd need to know what you're trying to connect it to... Are you trying to pair it with a phone, headset/keyboard, or computer for file transfer?  It kinda matters, since you have to get different things up and running... Whether it's rfcomm (HID devices) or bnep (PAN)... you may need fuse/obex. 
You'll need to install bluetooth and a bunch of dbus and python packages.  When you install arch, there's an option for the dbus-core package which is unchecked by default... you'll need that.  I never did get the bluez-simple-agent script working by the way (not on Arch, but I can do it in debian).
EDIT: In hindsight, probably need hal daemon running, too.
Try typing lsmod and see if bluetooth is running...  look for stuff like rfcomm or bnep... if you know you need bnep, try modprobing it.  See what happens when you type stuff like:
hciconfig
hciconfig hci0
hciconfig down
hciconfig up
hciconfig piscan
It all starts at hciconfig to see if your device is even listed... I never had a problem at this point.  Bluez always detected my usb bluetooth devices, although sometimes I have to put it down and back up again, then turn on pscan (or pscan AND iscan).  Iscan should make your laptop detectable by other devices that are searching for bluetooth devices... atleast it did under 3.x....  4.x, not working for me.
Anyways, you'll atleast need UP RUNNING PSCAN turned on for your to do stuff with it.
then try:
hcitool scan
hopefully it'll show any discoverable bluetooth devices in your area.
there's a hcitool cc option for making connections.  Totally useful in a PAN setting... MAYBE it works for rfcomm, but I doubt it... no idea what it's for...  hcitool was a big letdown for me... only thing I can do with it that's useful is scan other devices and get info on them.
If your device is detected, and you just can't seem to get it paired (simple under 3.x... I can't do it under 4.x though) what you CAN do is put the bluetooth usb device in another computer running windows and pair it with that... in your case it might not help, since the bluetooth device is probably integrated into it... but if it's a USB device, then this works. 
You only have to pair once... well, until you have to wipe your drive/phone/whatever...  and paired bluetooth devices go by the bluetooth address of the device itself, not what computer it happens to be in or anything.
Again, that part might not be very helpful to you in particular.
I've never set up a bluetooth over rfcomm... I imagine it's easier than a PAN over bnep, but I dunno... the rest won't apply for you if you're trying to connect to a headset or something.   
For rfcomm, type: rfcomm --help
You can make connections using that tool... for headsets or keyboards or something.
For PANs, clientside, you'll have to get bnep0 up, so you run:
pand --connect <bt address> -n
where <bt address> is the bluetooth address of your device AB:D3:23:12:11 or somesuch.
The -n part shouldn't matter, but it often times does... I can't get it working as a daemon or in persist mode...  without the -n part, I'd never have gotten any pans working.  Anyways, then you'll probably have to type:
ifconfig bnep0 up
if that doesn't do anything, well, don't give up, just try the next step anyways and see if it works:
dhcpcd bnep0
maybe dhcpcd isn't found or whatever... well, try dhc and then hit the TAB button and look at the autocompletion... it could be dhcpclient or something like that.
At this point it'll either work, or not... if it doesn't, just the above again, or in a different order, or try random stuff with the following relavent commands and hope for a miracle:
hciconfig
hcitool
rfcomm (for HID devices... maybe for ppp connections... I never did anything over DUN for GPRS)
pand
ifconfig
dhc<TAB KEY>
ping 74.125.67.100 
useful config files in 3.x:  hcid.conf
useful config files in 4.x:  none that  I know of, although main.conf and network.conf exist
the ping address is for google... easy one to remember.  Use it to see if you're network is working (if you're trying to get a PAN client set up).
The above is mainly about setting up bluetooth to connect to a PAN... it's all I use bluetooth for.  Hopefully that helps someone.  Sorry this isn't more readable... just going from memory.
Last edited by Daemonjax (2009-07-03 03:13:18)