Bluetooth!!!

Yes!!! It can be done!!! I have been able to make the Acer Aspire One to detect an chinese bluetooth dongle and communicate with mi cell phone. These were the steps.

First of all, as some people in this forum has said, the kernel of Linus Linux (ACER Linpus Linux) has no support for bluetooth, so we have to provide it. The way to do it is described in this post: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=608 (Howto: create missing kernel modules). You will need another PC where compile the new modules (in my case I used a Debian Lenny system).

So I downloaded the kernel sources, changed the name as described and did make menuconfig (I had to install libncurses5-dev in my system). Under the "Bluetooth support" section I selected every option (important: the RFCOMM layer and L2CAP). From the Bluetooth device drivers -section you should select the appropriate driver for you. In my case this is obviously the HCI USB driver (maybe this is the only you need for most of the chinese dongles).

Then you have to do make and make modules (maybe only make modules is needed - I'm not sure). Once it finished, you have to copy the new modules to the Acer Apire One. You have to copy the *.ko files under kernel/drivers/bluetooth and kernel/ner/bluetooth (with subdirectories - for rfcomm and l2cap) and copy them to the Acer under /lib/modules//lib/modules/2.6.23.9lw/kernel using the same path. Thena a "sudo depmod" is needed.

Now when you insert the BT dongle, at least bluetooth and hci_usb modules (check using lsmod) should be loaded. Maybe you need to manually load rfcomm and l2cap (sudo modprobe rfcomm and sudo modprobe l2cap).

We need to install bluetooth packages from Add/Remove Software (Advanced hack). The packages I installed were:

bluez-libs
gnome-bluetooth-libs
libbtctl
bluez-utils
gnome-bluetooth
bluez-hcidump
gnome-vfs2-obexftp

Well, now is the moment to plug the dongle and pray (not play ). Exactly, nothing happens. No led blinking in the dongle. To be fair, something has happened. Bluetooth mnodule has been loaded (check with lsmod). This is a good signal. And if you do "hciconfig" inside a terminal an hci0 device appears, but its mac is all 0's. Now doing "hciconfig hci0 up" the device should be activated, and after this "hciconfig -a" shlud return all dongle's info (with it macs correctly set).


Now you can use the tools installed. For instance, with "hcitool scan" you can find other bluetooth devices (check "hcitool -h" to discover other uses). For send/receive files yu can use gnome-obex-send and gnome-obex-server. Proper windows will appear to select bluetooth devices or when a file is receiver.

For other uses (connect to cell phone for modem, for example) modules rfcomm and l2cap must be used.

So, it's no a simple way, but it can be done. At least all this is only needed the first time.

 

this is great! will try this one out after i finish my thesis this week. AA1 has been very helpful.

 

Someboy already got it working. I didn't notice. More info: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=789
PD. Where is search in this forum??

 

Top right of most pages.

 

I will say thank you. Because unlike the "how-to" guide, You actually mention which Modules under menuconfig need to be selected. It seems that all the "how-to" guides assume the user knows which Modules need to be compiled, and also the name of the driver to be copied to the lib folder.
So again, thank you for actually giving direction as to what under menuconfig to select. (Name of *.ko drivers would be helpful, but I think using help in menuconfig I can get the driver names_

Hopefully when my dongle and bluetooth headset will arrive in a few days I will be able to configure it for Skype.

As for the search box it is only available in upper right when you are logged into the forum.

 

Almost there.
Let me state by saying my goal is to be able to use my Plantronics520 with Skype.
I was able to compile the needed drivers and move them into their appropriate folders.
I even was able to start bluetooth with sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth start, and was able to open the applet with sudo /usr/bin/bluetooth-applet and pair the Plantronics. I have set Audio service to running in the bluetooth applet but do not see the bluetooth headset as an available device in Skype. Any ideas?

(Hopefully I can set the Bluetooth stuff to autostart, at a later time.)

 

Hmmmm the link below got me a little closer.
http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:-d9 ... =firefox-a

I edited /etc/alsa/alsa.conf to include.
pcm.bluetooth {
type bluetooth
device 00:11:22:33:44:55(Change this to MAC of headset)
}

That is did not work, but I know it is close because bluetooth now appears in list of audio devices.
and it makes beeps in bluetooth headset when I try to send a test sound to it. (but not the test sounds)

I also installed bluez-utils-alsa, but I am not sure what to do with any of the package, or where it is.