[SUMMARY, 95% SUCCESS] Re: Attempt to buy a Linux-compatible Bluetooth dongle

[Omer Zak]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 14:19 +0300, Nitzan Brumer wrote:
> I bought the LVT-010 bluetooth dongle for my acer one. I use it with
> Ubuntu 8.10 and it works great out of the box. no problem there.
> http://www.bug.co.il/prodtxt.asp?id=6233&perur=1&t=10

Thanks also to Geoffrey Mendelson, Noam Rathaus and Rami Rosen.
The message was that nowadays Linux compatibility of Bluetooth devices
is not a problem.

I ended up buying a no-name brand, which looks the same as LVT-010.

It identified itself to lsusb as:
  ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)

According to
  http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/search_res.php?pattern=bluetooth
this USB dongle is Linux compatible.

While this dongle was found by my Nokia E71 cellphone, initially I was
not successful in doing things with it.  However
http://howto-pages.org/v600i_bluetooth/ provided me with useful advice
how to test the connection, which proved to work out of the box (except
for failure to pair and for not working under regular user):
- '/sbin/lsmod' showed rfcomm,hci_usb,l2cap.
- As root, 'hciconfig' displayed details about device hci0.  In
  particular, I saw the line:
  UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN
- 'hcitool scan' found my Nokia E71, in which I activated Bluetooth and
  set it to be discoverable.
- 'l2ping xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx' (where xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is the E71's
  address as reported by 'hcitool scan') worked.

The document was not up-to-date when it came to dealing with PIN
helpers.  hcid daemon was already active, with the -x -s options.  man
hcid provided no explanation of the -x option, while -s option meant
that an internal SDP server was activated (probably meaning that no sdpd
daemon is necessary).

- The command 'kbluetoothd' is now 'kbluetooth' and it did not discover
  my E71 when run under my user; but under root it did discover - if my
  E71's bluetooth was already active when 'kbluetooth' was invoked.
  Then when it accepted files from the E71, they were saved under root.
- 'kbtobexclient' worked out of the box, and I was successful in copying
  a file from PC to the E71.
- I was not successful in my attempts to pair the PC with the E71.

P.S.: my system is Debian Lenny, with bluez installed from Debian
repositories.

                                              --- Omer

-- 
MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world.
My own blog is at http://www.zak.co.il/tddpirate/

My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html