Bluetooth not working on Dell D630 (2009.1)

[jrohwer]

I cannot connect Bluetooth input devices (mouse and keyboard) as a normal user on my Dell Latitude D630 (Mandriva 2009.1). In the KDE Bluetooth Device Manager, the devices get picked up and shown as "connected" but they do not respond. If I then move the mouse, the status switches between "connected" and "not connected" but the mouse does not respond (i.e. cursor is not moved).

 

When I try to add the device manually as a normal user, I get the following:

$ hidd --search

Searching ...

Connecting to device 00:07:61:63:77:CD

HID create error 13 (Permission denied)

 

So it does seem to find the device but there is a permissions problem in connecting.

 

When I run the command as root:

# hidd --search

then everything works as expected and I can connect the devices. However, this is a pain because

1. the devices do not connect automatically on startup and I have to manually issue this command every time,

2. the devices don't reconnect automatically after a timeout.

 

Any ideas which permissions to set? Everything worked perfectly under 2009.0 and this is really annoying me....

--johann

[ianw1974]

It could be you might need to add your user to the plugdev group. I expect there is a GUI way to do it, but from console:

 

su (enter root password when prompted)
gpasswd -a username plugdev

 

replace username with your username, then log out and back in again and see if you can use the devices.

[scarecrow]

It may be the fact that several newer versions of the bluez library are very buggy.

I have eventually sorted it out, but I did have serious problems with quite a few versions of bluez.

Since I have no idea which bluez version 2009.1 is using, I cannot give a solid advice.

[jrohwer]

There is no group plugdev on my system. However, I tried adding myself to haldaemon and messagebus groups, but this did not solve the situation either.

 

Also, I tried editing the file /etc/dbus-1/system.d/bluetooth.conf:

Original file reads:

<!-- This configuration file specifies the required security policies
 for Bluetooth core daemon to work. -->

<!DOCTYPE busconfig PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD D-BUS Bus Configuration 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/dbus/1.0/busconfig.dtd">
<busconfig>

 <!-- ../system.conf have denied everything, so we just punch some holes -->

 <policy user="root">
<allow own="org.bluez"/>
<allow send_destination="org.bluez"/>
<allow send_interface="org.bluez.Agent"/>
 </policy>

 <policy at_console="true">
<allow send_destination="org.bluez"/>
 </policy>

  <policy context="default">
<deny send_destination="org.bluez"/>
 </policy> 

</busconfig>

 

I tried adding a block:

  <policy user="myusername">
<allow own="org.bluez"/>
<allow send_destination="org.bluez"/>
<allow send_interface="org.bluez.Agent"/>
 </policy>

 

as well as changing the "deny" to "allow" in the last policy, but again this did not solve the issue (after restarting the messagebus service).

 

Any further ideas?

[jrohwer]

It may be the fact that several newer versions of the bluez library are very buggy.

I have eventually sorted it out, but I did have serious problems with quite a few versions of bluez.

Since I have no idea which bluez version 2009.1 is using, I cannot give a solid advice.

 

[root@blikbrein ~]# rpm -qa |grep bluez

libbluez3-4.33-3mdv2009.1

lib64bluez3-4.33-3mdv2009.1

bluez-4.33-3mdv2009.1

bluez-firmware-1.2-5mdv2009.1