Bluetooth/Blueman won't detect bluetooth devices, other devices can't find computer

Question

I have an Acer Aspire E14 which came with an internal bluetooth adapter. On Ubuntu 14.04, the adapter is detected alright, but the computer can't find any other bluetooth devices, and other bluetooth devices can't find the computer. This seems to be a common problem,from what I can gather by doing a Google search. I've tried implementing all the fixes, but nothing has worked so far.

I've upgraded the kernel, and looked for newer drivers (there aren't any). I'd be very glad if someone could help me with this.

The model is Atheros QCA9565; it has the WNIC and bluetooth adapter on the same chip.

Thanks in advance! :)

Answer 1

Download https://www.dropbox.com/s/14wqp7t8u2026ds/test1.zip?dl=0 and extract it to /home so you have a test1 folder in home and enter the rest in terminal

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-firmware
cd test1
cp /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/Module.symvers Module.symvers
make all
sudo modprobe -r ath3k
sudo modprobe -r btusb
sudo mv /lib/modules/$(uname-r)/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/ath3k.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/ath3k.ko.bak
sudo mv /lib/modules/$(uname -r0/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btusb.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btusb.ko.bak
sudo cp ath3k.ko  /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/
sudo cp btusb.ko  /lib/modules/$(uname-r)/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/
sudo modprobe btusb
sudo modprobe ath3k

If after a shutdown and boot, you notice issues with bluetooth not working then

echo "blacklist ath3k" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ath3k.conf

Then edit /etc/rc.local sudo gedit /etc/rc.local and add sleep 20 and modprobe ath3k above the line with exit 0, save exit program and reboot

Answer 2

I have a different but similar issue, and I am not able to connect to my Bluetooth speaker. After searched a while, I find probably I need to upgrade my BIOS. You can check the BIOS version and release date using the following command:

$ sudo dmidecode -s bios-version
$ sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date

My desktop is Dell, so I checked the Dell website and found the latest BIOS is 07/09/2015, but my current BIOS release date is in 2014. In addition, using the following command

$ dmesg | grep -i blue

I got the following information, and the error message related to firmware is also a potential indication of outdated BIOS

[    4.189753] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.19
[    4.189788] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[    4.189793] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[    4.189794] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[    4.189802] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[    4.194508] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load failed with error -2
[    4.194510] bluetooth hci0: Falling back to user helper
[    4.257609] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: patch brcm/BCM43142A0-0a5c-21d7.hcd not found
[    5.837608] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[    5.837610] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[    5.837616] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[    5.841032] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[    5.841038] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[    5.841041] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11

Because I have another Windows OS installed on another disk, so I reboot into Windows and downloaded the latest BIOS upgrade EXE from Dell website, and execute it to upgrade my BIOS. After that, I reboot into Ubuntu, and it works like a charm.