38

I've been using Arch Linux for a while and bluetooth has been working without issues. Now, for no explicable reason, Arch doesn't detect my bluetooth adapters anymore.

I tried doing:
$ sudo systemctl enable bluetooth,
$ sudo systemctl start bluetooth and
$ sudo systemctl start dbus.

I've enabled generic bluetooth drivers:
$ sudo modprobe btusb.

I've installed: bluez, bluez-utils-compat and blueman.

$ sudo lsmod | grep bluetooth returns:

bluetooth             634880  11 btrtl,btintel,bnep,btbcm,btusb
ecdh_generic           24576  1 bluetooth
rfkill                 28672  7 bluetooth,acer_wmi,cfg80211
crc16                  16384  2 bluetooth,ext4

$ sudo lspci | grep blue returns nothing.

$ sudo hciconfig returns nothing.

$ sudo hcitool dev returns:

Devices:

$ sudo dmesg | grep Blue returns:

[  283.807549] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[  283.807585] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[  283.807588] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[  283.807589] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[  283.807594] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[  349.781130] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[  349.781135] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[  349.781148] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized

$ sudo rfkill list returns:

0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
1: acer-bluetooth: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

I've done:

$ bluetoothctl
[bluetoothctl]# scan on
No default controller available

When I open blueman-adapters, it opens but the window doesn't have any contents:

Blueman-adapters window

And when I open blueman-manager, the only functioning buttons are the View and Help menus:

Blueman-manager window

Some important info (if needed):

Model:           Acer Aspire S13 S5-371
Network Card:    Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4A
uname -r:        4.15.14-1-ARCH
BIOS Ver:        v1.5
OSes:            Windows 10, Arch Linux (dual boot using rEFInd)
Built in Bluetooth 4.0 support
JonathanDavidArndt
  • 1,463

6 Answers6

21

Same symptoms as in the question happend to me on a Dell XPS 13 after installing Wacom software for a Intuos BT S tablet.

Solution for me was disabling Bluetooth in the BIOS, rebooting and enabling it in the BIOS again, as is said in this thread: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2348005

Pin
  • 371
4

Are you dual-booting windows? If you are, make sure to disable FastBoot in Windows. This is from Intel Documentation:

About dual-boot with Windows and "fast-boot" enabled If you have a dual-boot machine with a recent version of Windows and start seeing problems during initialization of the WiFi device when booting Linux, the problem could be due to the “fast startup” feature on Windows.

With this feature enabled, Windows don't really shut down the entire system, but leaves things partially running so you can start the machine faster again. Try to disable this option, on Windows 10 it should be in “Control Panel→Hardware and Sound→Power Options→System Settings”, then disable the “Fast Startup” option in “Shutdown Settings”. This will cause Windows to fully shutdown and may solve the issue.

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi

Had a similar issue and figured out this was the reason.

sancho.s ReinstateMonicaCellio
  • 5,897
Luca Santarella
  • 41
1

No need to speculate as I've already solved this issue.

I went into Windows and found out that bluetooth didn't work there either (there was no slider to turn bluetooth on or off).

However, I figured out that if I opened the action menu (WIN-KEY+A) then clicked on the bluetooth icon twice (which was blue and had my phone's name on it, weird), bluetooth started working again somehow. I went back to Linux and it was working there as well. Problem solved it seems.

1

Whilst this is not an answer, I provide it here in the hope that it could be useful for people landing in this thread. Here you go:

I had troubles with my Philips SHB9850NC and I resolved the issue by installing pulseaudio-module-bluetooth. Later I've installed blueman too, which is a Gnome thing. Since I use KDE, I've removed blueman after that. Then troubles started to happen: my Bluetooth adapter vanished from existence.

The procedure below is intended to reinstall the entire Bluetooth stack for KDE, including pulseaudio-module-bluetooth. However, this didn't solve the issue. My Bluetooth adapter is still not detected.

$ sudo apt install --reinstall -y bluetooth bluez bluez-firmware bluez-hcidump bluez-cups bluez-tools pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
$ for cmd in unload load ;do sudo pactl ${cmd}-module module-bluetooth-discover ;done
$ for cmd in force-reload restart ;do sudo service bluetooth ${cmd} ;done
Richard Gomes
  • 229
1

I spent a long time looking for an arch specific solution to this problem but booting into a live USB and seeing no bluetooth devices found there either convinced me it was a hardware issue.

Perhaps this is ASUS specific but I found this SO answer referencing a Reddit Post saying to:

  1. Shutdown the machine
  2. Remove the power cable
  3. Hold power button for 30s (I believe this is to clear all capacitors)
  4. Put power cable back in and start machine

This worked for me.

Aswan
  • 121
0

I use manjaro, but bluetooth dongle was not working.

It did the following steps to fix it.

  • removed package: manjaro-firmware

  • and installed bcm43142a0-firmware

    I installed the bluetooth on another laptop on windows 10 and it worked. I don't know if this step helped. You never know.

  • Install kernel linux 5.9.1 rt19-1 real-time

  • Installed realtek bluetooth firmware for RTL 8761B based devices (rtl8761b-fw)

Realtek Bluetooth 5.0+EDR by techkey is working pretty good so far.

  • Kernel: 5.9.1-1-rt19-MANJARO x86_64
  • bits: 64
  • Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.20.4
  • Distro: Manjaro Linux
Stephen Rauch
  • 3,296
dragon
  • 1