Page 1 of 1

Solved: Bluetooth mouse will not pair or function

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:07 pm
by Lolo Uila
See EDIT below...

Bluetooth seems to be on, and it detects my Bluetooth mouse, but no matter what I try I cannot get it to work. It keeps asking for authentication, and even though I select "Always accept" and set the mouse as "Trusted" it just keeps asking.

All attempts to "pair" fail, and setup without pairing says it succeeds, but it keeps asking for authentication.

Same mouse and adapter work fine in Mint-13/Maya-Cinnamon and Crunchbang Linux (Statler & Waldorf, which is also Debian based, and Waldorf is even based on Debian testing).

Mouse is a Logitech MX900, and I'm using my Netbook's built-in Broadcom Bluetooth module (not the Logitech cradle).

EDIT: Finally got it to work after I don't know how many tries (dozens). Tried putting it on its cradle and hitting connect. That usually resets it so it can be paired with another device. Although in Mint-13 and #! I did not have to do this. But since I was having trouble with LMDE I gave it a try, to no avail (still didn't work).

:-(

However, pairing it with my desktop PC (the one the cradle is connected to) and then deleting it finally reset it enough that LMDE could install it. Don't know why LMDE had so much trouble. Mint-13 and #! just accepted it without having to delete previous pairings (as I said, it was the same computer and Bluetooth adapter, so this really shouldn't have been a problem).

Oh well, the joys of distro-hopping... Stil haven't found the "perfect" Linux for my little Netbook.

Re: Solved: Bluetooth mouse will not pair or function

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2012 10:11 pm
by Lolo Uila
comoncents wrote:I have had some issues getting Bluetooth to work on several different laptops with Mint 13.0 Mate and Cinnamon. Through experimentation I have been able to get the following Bluetooth devices to work:

Targus Bluetooth Mouse
Sony Stereo Headphones
Plantronics Mono Headset

I also could not get anything to connect using the installed bluetooth interface in Mate. It would keep asking for authentication but would never pair. What I did may help you:

First, make sure that your bluetooth radio is on. On my Toshibas, it is off by default at boot and must be turned on with FN 8 each time. Probably a Bios issue... I just remember to always do it.

Second, install "gnome-bluetooth". It's available in the software manager and doesn't install by default.

I think that the default bluetooth software in Mint Mate has some stack issues with protocol, services, etc. and installing "gnome-bluetooth" in particular seems to fix this, including allowing connection to the appropriate services. If you are having interface problems also install the BlueDevil bluetooth GUI. It puts a big blue bluetooth symbol in your tray. It seems to work OK and then you can just uninstall it after all your devices are working properly. After using this, then magically the default GUI started working properly on my machines.
Thanks, I usually install Blueman as the GUI. It works better than the Gnome Bluetooth applet, and it doesn't pull in a crapload of KDE dependencies like Blue Devil.

I had no trouble with 13/Cinnamon. Everything worked out of the box. Just runs sluggish on my little Netbook.

MATE's Bluetooth is still a bit broken. I got to the point where I could add devices, but I could not configure them or remove them (Bluetooth properties/preferences would not open).

Cruchbang (#!) ran great on the Netbook. Super fast and ridiculously low resources. You can load a ton of stuff and it will only be using a few 100MB of memory. Unfortunately I ran into some nasty problems with accessing my nfs shares.

And now I'm trying LMDE-Xfce on the little 'puter. LMDE has had a few issues. The above mentioned Bluetooth problem, and I had to edit a system file to get my Synaptics touchpad working. The other one I've found is a known bug in Thunar where it takes about 30 seconds to open a folder the first time you use it. Annoying but not fatal (and I'm pretty sure I have seen a fix for that, but I can't remember where, or what it was at the moment). I'm a bit worried I'll run into the same nfs issues as #!, since LMDE is based on the same Debian sources.

EDIT: ARGHHH!!! LMDE just froze while playing media from my server! So, same problem as #!

Re: Bluetooth mouse will not pair or function

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 10:24 am
by zikko71
it is not solved on LMDE. If someone have the solution ?thanks

Re: Solved: Bluetooth mouse will not pair or function

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 10:59 am
by ccsalway
I found that turning visibility on, worked for me. didnt install any other software.