Bluetooth On Linux

Got myself a no-name Bluetooth USB dongle recently. I was quite surprised that with Fedora Core 3, using the included BlueZ Bluetooth stack, usage is actually quite smooth. Here's a few hints on how to set things up and use them as proper documentation is still quite sparse.

Hardware Considerations
Basic BlueZ Configuration
Obex
Mounting Symbian Devices
Outlook
Updates

Hardware Considerations

Frequently asked everywhere - which hardware should I choose if I want to purchase a Bluetooth transceiver for my PC? Check the BlueZ Hardware List. In general about 99% of all the no-name USB dongles out there contain the CSR Chip (as of early 2005). Buy one of these cheapo-thingies and you should be fine.

Basic BlueZ Configuration

• Make sure you have all the necessary parts of BlueZ installed. You'll probably want these rpms:
  
  • bluez-pin (PIN helper applciation)
  • bluez-utils-cups (A CUPS backend to print to BT printers))
  • bluez-hcidump (Debugging on the lower layer))
  • bluez-utils (Core cmd-Line Utilities) )
  • bluez-libs (Libs for BLuetooth applications))
  • bluez-bluefw (Firmware loader for certain hardware)
  • gnome-bluetooth (Gnome Integration))


• The kernel modules have to be loaded correctly, add the following to /etc/modprobe.conf:
  # General BlueZ Bluetooth Support:
alias net-pf-31 bluez
alias bt-proto-0 l2cap
alias bt-proto-2 sco
alias bt-proto-3 rfcomm
alias bt-proto-4 bnep
# for Bluetooth UARTs:
alias tty-ldisc-15 hci_uart



• Create a (typically 4-digit, numeric) secret PIN Code for your system by e.g. putting 1234 into /etc/bluetooth/pin.


• Plug in your Bluetooth transceiver. In /var/log/messages you should then be able to see the device being detected correctly, such as:
  kernel: Bluetooth: Core ver 2.7
kernel: NET: Registered protocol family 31
kernel: Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
kernel: Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
kernel: Bluetooth: HCI USB driver ver 2.7
kernel: usbcore: registered new driver hci_usb



• Start the bluetooth sub-system with /etc/init.d/bluetooth start, /var/log/messages should yield:
  hcid[10158]: Bluetooth HCI daemon
bluetooth: hcid startup succeeded
bluetooth: sdpd startup succeeded
hcid[10158]: HCI dev 0 up
hcid[10158]: Starting security manager 0
kernel: Bluetooth: L2CAP ver 2.6
kernel: Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
kernel: Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.3
kernel: Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
kernel: Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
sdpd[10164]: Bluetooth SDP daemon



• You can now check that your BT device is correctly identified by the Bluetooth stack with hcitool dev. You should see the device's Address printed. Next, make sure your other Bluetooth device is discoverable and try to discover it with hcitool inq. After some searching, this should show your device and list it's address:
  $ hcitool inq
Inquiring ...
     00:60:57:8C:41:AA    clock offset: 0x660c    class: 0x500204



• Next, try to ping your device by specifiying it's address with l2ping 00:60:57:8C:41:AA


• Finally you should pair your devices. Initiate this from your remote device and when asked, enter the PIN that you've put into /etc/bluetooth/pin.
  NOTE: Dunno how to initiate pairing from Linux. Someone out there could give me a pointer on this?

Obex

Obex (Object Exchange) is used to exchange files between 2 devices. This is what you know from IrDA as "beaming" a file. openobex*.rpm has to be installed for that.

• To send a file from the command-line to another device, issue obex_push <address> <file> where <address> is the address of the remote device as found by hictool inq.


• To receive a file from another device via the command-line, you need to download obexserver.c, compile it, register the correct SDP service (for Nokia this is RfCOMM channel 10) with sdptool add --channel=10 OPUSH and run your compiled obexserver.


• To send a file from within Nautilus in GNOME to another device, run Applications->System Tools->File Sharing. Then just right-click on a file and Send via Bluetooth....


• To receive a file from another device within GNOME, just make sure that Applications->System Tools->File Sharing is running. Then transmit the file from your other device and a pop-up should open asking you what to do with the received file.

Mounting Symbian Devices

This is a beautiful little application for your Symbian device (SonyEricsson, Nokia, Siemens, Samsung phones, Psion PDAs, among others). It allows you to mount your device's file system directly under Linux. That way you can e.g. directly access the memory card of your phone and copy applications/data to it. To get this running:

• Download p3nfs. Install the correct nfsapp.sis to your Symbian device.


• Bind RfCOMM channel 11 (which is used by nfsapp on your Symbian device) by adding the following to /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf (make sure rfcomm0 is not defined yet, optionally use another rfcomm), then restart the bluetooth daemons :
  rfcomm0 {
# Automatically bind the device at startup
bind yes;

# Bluetooth address of _YOUR_ device, EDIT THIS!
device 00:60:57:8C:41:AA;

# RFCOMM channel for the connection
channel 11;

# Description of the connection
comment "My Symbian p3nfs connection";
}



• Create a mount-point for your device, say /mnt/MyPhone


• Start nfsapp on the Symbian device and switch to the Bluetooth connection (with the joystick or jog-dial for smartphones).


• On the Linux host, start the application with p3nfsd -series60 -dir /mnt/MyPhone -tty /dev/rfcomm0 (note the parameters, see the man page). Your device is now accesible in /mnt/MyPhone.


• To stop the connection, do a ls /mnt/MyPhone/exit.

Outlook

Some things I'm planning to get set up and documented (I'd really appreciate comments, pointers, hints,... on these topics):

• GPRS dial-up with a mobile phone
• SyncML a mobile phone's phone-book with Evolution
• Audio connection to headsets.

Updates

Here's the ChangeLog of this page:

$Log: bluetooth.shtml,v $
Revision 1.3 2005/03/12 17:06:09 hajo
Added sections OBEX, Mounting Symbian Devices, Outlook

Revision 1.2 2005/03/12 16:11:42 hajo
Added Hardware & BlueZ Config

Revision 1.1 2005/03/12 13:53:04 hajo
Initial release