How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

[Daniel Hatton]

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I've previously mentioned on here that I couldn't get 
(USB-dongle-provided) Bluetooth to start on boot, always had to start it 
manually from the Gnome settings app.  Well, for the last week or so, I 
can't even start it manually - when I click the little switch at the top 
of the Gnome settings window, it refuses to switch on.  How do I go 
about diagnosing what's wrong, please?  Instructions I find on the WWW 
seem to assume systemd, and I'm on shepherd.

-- 

Kind regards,

Dan Hatton

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Re: How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

[Ignas Lapėnas]

Hi,

I'm guessing that you're using bluez under the hood. Try using
bluetoothctl in the terminal and check if you can power on the bluetooth
device through there. 

https://man.archlinux.org/man/extra/bluez-utils/bluetoothctl.1.en

-- 
Hope that helps,
Ignas

Re: How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

[Daniel Hatton]

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On 18/11/2024 07:57, Ignas Lapėnas wrote:

> I'm guessing that you're using bluez under the hood. Try using
> bluetoothctl in the terminal and check if you can power on the bluetooth
> device through there.

bluetoothctl power on

produces the error message "No default controller available"

and

bluetoothctl list

comes up blank.

I've checked with lsmod, and the bluetooth kernel module is loaded.

What's the next move, please?

-- 

Kind regards,

Dan Hatton


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Re: How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

[Ignas Lapėnas]

> bluetoothctl power on
>
> produces the error message "No default controller available"
>
> and
>
> bluetoothctl list
>
> comes up blank.
>
> I've checked with lsmod, and the bluetooth kernel module is loaded.
>
> What's the next move, please?

Most information I could find is summarized here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bluetooth#bluetoothctl:_No_default_controller_available

Since you're with guix, journalctl command should be replaced with
something like this.

sudo cat /var/log/messages | grep hci

to check if you're blocked by rfkill the command should simply be rfkill

-- 
Hope that helps,
Ignas

Re: How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

[Daniel Hatton]

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On 18/11/2024 11:35, Ignas Lapėnas wrote:


> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bluetooth#bluetoothctl:_No_default_controller_available
> Since you're with guix, journalctl command should be replaced with
> something like this.
> sudo cat /var/log/messages | grep hci
> to check if you're blocked by rfkill the command should simply be rfkill

Well, the good news is that /var/log/messages contains an error message 
that the ALW page you cite suggests a solution for.  The bad news is 
that the solution is "remove all power sources to force the device to 
reload the firmware".  This box is a laptop, and it doesn't look like 
disconnecting the battery is going to be any straightforward operation. 
Unless: the Bluetooth controller I'm trying to use is a USB dongle, can 
I achieve the same effect by just pulling it out of the USB port?

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Re: How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

[Ignas Lapėnas]

> Well, the good news is that /var/log/messages contains an error
> message that the ALW page you cite suggests a solution for.  The bad
> news is that the solution is "remove all power sources to force the
> device to reload the firmware".  This box is a laptop, and it doesn't
> look like disconnecting the battery is going to be any straightforward
> operation. Unless: the Bluetooth controller I'm trying to use is a USB
> dongle, can I achieve the same effect by just pulling it out of the
> USB port?

It's difficult to say for certain. But somehow I think you did try
replugging the usb dongle as a troubleshooting step? If not, that would
be a one thing to try to fix the issue.

The thing is, It's not exactly clear to me if the firmware is loaded or
not and I'm a bit out of scope at this point. One interesting thing I've
read some time ago and it might be of use here, was that you can force a
cold-boot (Should have the same effect as with waiting a bit without
power completely) by editing kernel parameters.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v6.11/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.html

```
 reboot=         [KNL]
                        Format (x86 or x86_64):
                                [w[arm] | c[old] | h[ard] | s[oft] | g[pio]] | d[efault] \
                                [[,]s[mp]#### \
                                [[,]b[ios] | a[cpi] | k[bd] | t[riple] | e[fi] | p[ci]] \
                                [[,]f[orce]
                        Where reboot_mode is one of warm (soft) or cold (hard) or gpio
                                        (prefix with 'panic_' to set mode for panic
                                        reboot only),
                              reboot_type is one of bios, acpi, kbd, triple, efi, or pci,
                              reboot_force is either force or not specified,
                              reboot_cpu is s[mp]#### with #### being the processor
                                        to be used for rebooting.

```

And if I'm not wrong (would love some input from others who edited their
kernel command-line arguments) it should be possible to do with:

(kernel-arguments) 

Example for how kernel-arguments is used:

https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Using-the-Configuration-System.html

Also it might be possible that during startup of pc, there is a way to
also for the time being use one or another parameter.

-- 
Hope that helps,
Ignas

Re: How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

[Daniel Hatton]

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On 18/11/2024 14:15, Ignas Lapėnas wrote:
> somehow I think you did try
> replugging the usb dongle as a troubleshooting step? If not, that would
> be a one thing to try to fix the issue.

I had tried it, but only very briefly, and not together with a reboot. 
I've now tried unplugging the dongle and shutting down the machine 
overnight, and it made no difference.

However, today I have an unexpected popup window with the error message

   g-dbus-error-quark:
   GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name
   org.blueman.Mechanism was not provided by any .service files (2)

which may or may not be useful further diagnostic information.


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Re: How to diagnose Bluetooth trouble?

[Daniel Hatton]

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Oh - something I should probably have mentioned before is that I have 
two Bluetooth controllers on this machine - an internal one (hci0) which 
I don't expect to work on Guix because it needs proprietary firmware, 
and the USB dongle (hci1) that I'm trying to use.


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