[COLUG] Bluetooth Blues

[Peter King]

I can't quite figure out what I'm doing wrong; perhaps someone
can spot the mistake and set me straight.

I'm trying to establish a bluetooth connection between an Apple
Wireless Keyboard and, variously, a Lenovo 3000 n100 with Bluetooth
built in, and an Asus eee with an added Bluetooth dongle. Neither
quite works. But I have a successful Bluetooth connection between
the Apple Keyboard with my Nokia n800; last night I managed to 
pair it with my wife's MacBook; and today I connected to another iMac
via the dongle -- so the problem, whatever it is, must be in how to 
configure things on the Linux side.

What I've done is this. On the eee/Lenovo, Bluetooth support is in
the kernel, and I start it up via /etc/init.d/bluetooth. Once the
daemons are running, on the eee I have to run sudo hciconfig hci0 up
to get the dongle up and running, too. Anyhow, so now the eee/Lenovo
should be ready. If I search with sudo hcitool scan I find the Apple
keyboard, and I make a note of the keyboard's hardware address. I turn
off the keyboard, turn it on again to put it in pairing mode, and run: 

   sudo hidd --connect <KEYBOARD ADDRESS>

That's where nothing happens. No matter what I do at this point -- be
it nothing, or typing in any one of a variety of codes (0000 or the
pin number in /etc/bluetooth/pin or the number my wife's MacBook told
me to type in) -- the connection invariably times out. Sometimes I get
a different message, saying that the device is down, but usually the
message is that the connection timed out.

If I try sudo hidd --search, instead, I usually don't find the keyboard
at all. But if I run sudo hcitool scan just before, it will find the
keyboard. And it says that it's connecting! But no such luck: it times
out too.

I've tried this with all manner of auth/encrypt enable and disable
combinations in hcid.conf, without success. Ditto the line about master
and slave. The connection HIDD=1 is set. No change.

All this *just* to pair a keyboard. I shudder at the thought of trying
to add a mouse. But on the Apple equipment, the pairing took less than
half-a-minute. Not a victory for Linux, alas.

Oh yes: the Lenovo runs gentoo, kernel 2.6.24r3; the eee runs Xandros, 
as it came from the store with its stock kernel. No surprises in either 
case.

What do I try now?

-- 
Peter King			 	peter.king at utoronto.ca
Department of Philosophy
215 Huron Street
The University of Toronto		    (416)-978-4951 ofc
Toronto, ON  M5S 1A2
       CANADA

http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/

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