Bluetooth

Bluetooth is an international standard for short-distance wireless communication between devices. It is often used for input devices (mice and keyboards), phones and wireless headsets, but many more other uses are possible.

Bluetooth support for Linux is provided through the Linux kernel and the BlueZ project.

Installing BlueZ
When using a Desktop environment such as KDE, GNOME or Xfce, the Bluetooth application will automatically install BlueZ as a dependency.

However, if this is not the case, or you want to use bluetooth devices without any specific application, install the package:

Kernel-level requirements
When you want to pair bluetooth devices with your Linux workstation, you will need to enable the proper kernel configuration settings.

Do not forget to add in to automatically load the bluetooth kernel module at boot-up:

System configuration
Add the bluetooth init script to the default runlevel so that the necessary bluetooth services are started automatically.

User authorizations
Most probably you would like to access bluetooth devices (through the bluetooth services) from a regular user, so add the user(s) to the plugdev group:

To apply these changed group membership, the user needs to log out and logged in again.

Device Attach/Pairing
Before a device can be used, it must be attached (paired in Bluetooth-lingo). This is done by entering a PIN (or other code) on both devices.

In order to pair, you must first have the interaction agent active. Most desktop environments have bluetooth integration so will automatically support the interaction agent. For example, KDE has.

Using the simple-agent
To help debugging bluetooth interaction (without the overhead of desktop environment libraries), the bluez package provides the simple-agent application. It is installed if the test-programs USE flag is set.

If you get the following output, it means that you already have an interaction agent running on your system:

To scan for devices, use the hcitool:

The hcitool can also be used to attach a device:

Any interaction requirement is handled through the simple-agent application (or the interaction agent of your preferred desktop environment).

Enter a PIN and press, then enter the same PIN at the device.

You are now ready to proceed.

Devices

 * Headset
 * Modem
 * Joystick:Sony DualShock3