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(I know this error has been reported in different guises but none of the older solutions on this site have worked for me)

I can't see any Bluetooth adapters in the Unity Control Center Bluetooth program. The laptop is a Dell Vostro 3300 and I'm using Ubuntu 16.04.1

output of sudo lsmod |grep bluetooth

bluetooth             520192  4 btbcm,btrtl,btusb,btintel

output of sudo lsusb |grep Bluetooth

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp. BCM2046B1 USB 2.0 Hub (part of BCM2046 Bluetooth)

output of dmesg | grep Bluetooth

[  516.708947] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.21
[  516.708977] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[  516.708981] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[  516.708984] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[  516.708991] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized

output of sudo rfkill list

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
1: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

Edit: tried the solution recommended by Pilot6 but it doesn't apply to my Bluetooth chipset.

muru
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warsong
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  • Possible duplicate of Bluetooth Broadcom 43142 isn't working on ubuntu – Pilot6 Nov 04 '16 at 15:20
  • What is the underlying issue here? Is this a bug in Ubuntu because I have seen so many different people with this problem now yet for some reason the Ubuntu developers haven't fixed it. I'm downloading the drivers you mentioned and will try that solution but the download is going to take a while. – warsong Nov 04 '16 at 15:49
  • The file with the ID of the device on my laptop doesn't show up in the driver from the ASUS site, I'm still waiting on the other download. – warsong Nov 04 '16 at 15:57
  • Probably this solution won't work for this device. – Pilot6 Nov 04 '16 at 16:08
  • Correct. I tried the other download also and there is no such device in any of the INF files. – warsong Nov 04 '16 at 16:17
  • Post results for lsusb | grep -i 0a5c – Jeremy31 Nov 04 '16 at 17:18
  • Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp. BCM2046B1 USB 2.0 Hub (part of BCM2046 Bluetooth) – warsong Nov 04 '16 at 17:26
  • finally discovered the underlying issue, the bluez-util version used in Ubuntu post 14.04 is broken. The last working major version was 4.x. 5.x seems to have killed a lot of Dell 365 Wireless Module devices. the next struggle is probably getting a fix into Ubuntul/bluez – warsong Jan 22 '17 at 17:20

1 Answers1

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So this is bizarre but it is now working despite the device not being detected on Ubuntu 16.04 earlier. After installing Windows 7 and enabling the device and seeing that it worked fine, I searched for details on the exact module now that I had the Windows name for it. Later I discovered that there was a change in bluez-utils from 14.04 to 14.10 that could have broken the device. (bluez went from 4.x to 5.x) I then installed Ubuntu 14.04 to confirm for myself that the device was working and it was. I then tried to install 16.10 and the device is still working so I am going to assume that getting it to switch on Ubuntu 14.04 or Windows 7 then installing later versions of Ubuntu makes it work.

warsong
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  • Booting to Windows and then restarting to Ubuntu works. If you poweroff and start directly to Ubuntu, it won't work. – Pilot6 Jan 22 '17 at 17:51
  • I'm not dual booting so that wouldn't help me. But there definitely seems to be some link from the Bluetooth module to Windows, maybe something to do with the drivers. All I know is that I doubt I will buy another Dell laptop to run Linux. Maybe a Thinkpad next time. – warsong Jan 22 '17 at 19:05