The implementation was made through 2 modules: module-bluetooth-device and module-bluetooth-discover. The latter connects to BlueZ through D-Bus to find out what devices have already been paired with each adapter present on the system, and the loads one instance of the module-bluetooth-device for each device found (in contrast to linux kernel modules, PulseAudio modules can be loaded more than once at the same time). It also keeps watching for new adapters and devices, so it can load a module to take care of each new device that shows up.

The former, module-bluetooth-device, is the one who actually does the job of creating the bluetooth audio channel in PulseAudio. First, it connects to the BlueZ audio service through one unix socket to obtain the device capabilities. Then it configures the device according to it's capabilities, setup the SBC encoder (if applicable) and obtain a file descriptor to write audio data to the device. This fd is passed to a PulseAudio I/O thread (which runs with real time priorities if the user has real time privileges properly set), which gets the audio data coming to this sink (sink is the name of an output channel in PulseAudio), encode it (if applicable) and write it on the device fd. Also, the I/O thread has to take care of the clock synchronization between PulseAudio an the device.

I really enjoyed doing this job. Working with an open source community is outstanding! I've learned a lot during the program, made good contacts, and the most important: had a lot of fun! I would like to thank a lot my mentor, Luiz Augusto von Dentz, and the PulseAudio maintainer, Lennart Poettering. Without the help of these two guys I wouldn't have been able to finish this project. And of course I have to thank Google for helping FLOSS develpment throug this program and LH for making the program happen and for being so kind and patient with all the students. LH, you rock!

I'll continue working on this project, since there still a lot to be done. Time synchronization is not the best and the usability is far from ideal. I have a git repository for this on gitorious, on an branch called bt. Feel free to point bugs and make sugestions. Also, if you really enjoyed the project and want to help more, I accept donations of A2DP, HSP, or HFP bluetooth audio devices, for test and development. All of this was made so far with a borrowed device from my good friend João Eduardo Ferreira Bertacchi (thanks JE!). The oficial release note on the BlueZ website about this project can be found here.

Oben in der Startleiste hatte ich sofort ein kleines Bluetooth Icon. Hierauf kann man mit der rechten Maustaste klicken und dann auf "Einstellungen". Diese Einstellungen sind nötig, damit man erfolgreich Dateien über Bluetooth übertragen kann.

Hier erstmal Screenshots von den Einstellungen meines Ubuntu-Laptops:

In den Einstellungen unter "Allgemein" braucht "Receive files from remote devices" NICHT ausgewählt sein, damit man Dateien über Bluetooth empfangen kann. Mehr dazu weiter unten.

Interessant sind auch die Einstellungen, die einem unter dem "Adapternamen" angeboten werden. Der Adaptername lautet in meinem Fall Rechnername-0. Die Einstellung "Andere Geräte können eine Verbindung aufbauen" funktioniert wunderbar, solange man vom Ubuntu-Rechner aus nur Dateien verschicken will. Wenn man welche empfangen will, dann sollte das sendende Gerät entweder den Bluetooth-Namen des Rechners schon kennen, oder man muss die zweite Einstellung wählen: "Sichtbar und bereit, Verbindungen anzunehmen".

Nun aber zu den Einstellungen unter Windows Mobile:

Im Com-Manager unter den Bluetooth-Einstellungen ist Ähnliches zu finden wie unter Ubuntu. Wenn "Dieses Gerät (...) sichtbar machen" nicht angekreuzt ist, dann wird der Datenempfang dadurch erschwert, dass nur Geräte senden können, die das Win mobile Gerät schon "kennen". Im Normalfall empfiehlt es sich, dies kurz anzukreuzen und nach dem Übertragen der Dateien Bluetooth komplett zu deaktivieren.

Wesentlich gemeiner versteckt ist eine wichtige Option, die den Datenempfang über Bluetooth überhaupt erst ermöglicht. Unter "Start -> Einstellungen -> Verbindungen -> Datenempfang" muss "Alle eingehenden Daten empfangen" aktiviert sein, sonst können keine Dateien vom Win Mobile Gerät empfangen werden.

Datentransfer von Ubuntu nach Win Mobile

Dies ist der einfachere Teil der ganzen Geschichte. Einfach die oben erklärten Einstellungen am Win Mobile Gerät vornehmen und dieses auch für andere Geräte erkennbar machen.

Mit der rechten Maustaste die Datei anklicken, "senden an" wählen, Bluetooth auswählen und das Gerät, an das man die Datei senden möchte. Das war's schon.

Datentransfer von WinMobile nach Ubuntu

Diese Richtung hat mich einiges Kopfzerbrechen gekostet. Man muss das Paket gnome-bluetooth nachinstallieren! (mittels Synaptic)

Ist dies installiert, so hat man im Startmenü unter "Anwendungen -> Zubehör" ein Programm namens "Bluetooth Dateiverteilung". Dieses Programm muss man starten, danach steht in der Startleiste ein neues Symbol zur Verfügung (im Screenshot rot unterstrichen). Nun kann man ganz normal an den Ubuntu-Rechner Dateien senden, die standardmäßig auf dem Desktop abgespeichert werden.

La versione di serie su Gutsy 7.10 è la 3.19 che poi potrà essere aggiornata alla 3.24, su Hardy 8.04 la 3.26 e su Intrepid 8.10 (con molta probabilità resterà) la 3.36. Nel caso non si riesca a risolvere il problema del bluetooth che non riceve è possibile installare la vecchia versione 3.24 oppure la nuova versione 3.36 dei pacchetti bluetooth e bluez-utils.

I pacchetti di Gutsy alla versione 3.19 sono disponibili su:

1. http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/bluetooth
2. http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/bluez-utils

I pacchetti di Gutsy alla versione 3.24 sono disponibili su:

1. http://www.alliedquotes.com/mirrors/Ubuntu/pool/main/b/bluez-utils/

I pacchetti di Intrepid alla versione 3.36 sono disponibili su:

1. http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/bluetooth
2. http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/bluez-utils

Se n'era discusso sul forum di Ubuntu e a me personalmente dopo tanto sbattimento, la versione 3.36 ha risolto il problema. Anche la versione 3.24 funziona correttamente sia su Gutsy sia su Hardy.

Bluetooth Manager visto en http://www.laconsolablog.com/

Algo que me dí cuenta es que Ubuntu no trae un administrador de nuestros dispositivos bluetooth, al menos uno donde veamos todos los dispositivos que utilizan ese servicio y podamos administrarlos directamente desde la misma ventana.

Por suerte Blueman soluciona esto y con mas suerte aún porque la versión 0.3 svn ya tiene repositorios para gutsy. La versión actual es la 0.5 y tenemos repositorios para Hardy:

Para poder agregarlo vamos a editar nuestro sources.list donde se encuentra la lista de todos nuestros repositorios de software:

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

y agregamos al final del archivo:

# Repositorios de Blueman
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/blueman ubuntu bluetooth blueman-svn

Guardamos con Ctrl + S y cerramos con Ctrl +Q

Agregamos los repositorios para Hardy:

$ sudo wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/blueman/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/blueman.list

Importamos la llave GPG que verifica los paquetes:

$ wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/blueman/blueman.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Actualizamos la lista de repositorios:

$ sudo apt-get update

Instalamos Blueman:

$ sudo apt-get install blueman blueman-i18n

Finalizada la instalación vamos al menú Aplicaciones > Accesorios encontramos a Blueman Bluettoth Manager y podemos ver un pantallazo

Bluetooth en ubuntu visto en http://gndx.org

En esta entrada vamos a emparejar nuestro Celular con Bluetooth a nuestro Ubuntu Linux. [ probado con Sony Ericcson Motorola y Nokia ]Antes que nada Tendremos que realizar la instalación de paquetes necesarios.

Instalación en Gnome.

gndx@Firax:~$ sudo apt-get install gnome-bluetooth bluez-utils bluez-gnome bluetooth

Reconocimiento de Bluetooth en Linux

aplicaremos el siguiente comando si usas una llave bluetooth

gndx@Firax:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 1131:1001 Integrated System Solution Corp. KY-BT100 Bluetooth Adapter

Y nos debe de arrojar algo parecido a lo anterior.

Ahora tendremos que activarle con el siguiente comando.

gndx@Firax:~$ hciconfig hci0 up

nos pedirá Permisos así que ejecutenlo como root

Detectando el Celular.

gndx@Firax:~$ hcitool scan
Scanning …
00:1D:98:D1:82:42       [GnDx]

Ahora ha encontrado nuestro MAC y el nombre que le asignamos a nuestro celular.

Configurando Ubuntu para emparejar con el celular.

Aquí es donde tendremos que configurar algunos archivos para sincronizar nuestro Ubuntu con el Celular.

Primero editaremos rfcomm.conf donde agregaremos nuestra MAC

gndx@Firax:~$ sudo gedit  /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

Buscaremos la siguiente linea  [ #    bind no; ]
y la reemplazaremos por:  [ #    bind yes; ]

Ahora en la line:

#    # Bluetooth address of the device
#    device xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;

Por la siguiente

#    # Bluetooth address of the device
#    device 00:1D:98:D1:82:42;

Nota: solo agregaremos la MAC que nos arrojo el comando hcitool scan  en mi caso fue 00:1D:98:D1:82:42, reemplazando las xx.xx.xx.xx.xx.xx

Guardamos y cerramos para proceder a editar el hcid.conf para modificar los parametros de seguridad  y contraseñas de emparejamiento.

gndx@Firax:~$ sudo gedit  /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf

buscaremos la siguientes lineas

# Security Manager mode
#   none - Security manager disabled
#   auto - Use local PIN for incoming connections
#   user - Always ask user for a PIN
#
security user;

Para ser reemplazada por la siguiente

# Security Manager mode
#   none - Security manager disabled
#   auto - Use local PIN for incoming connections
#   user - Always ask user for a PIN
#
security auto;

Donde estamos activando que la seguridad sea automática para usar nuestro PIN.

Crearemos nuestro PIN para emparejamiento.

En la siguiente linea vamos agregar el PIN

# Default PIN code for incoming connections
passkey “x0123456x”;

Cualquier contraseña servira como PIN pero recuerda que sea facil de recordar.

Guardamos y cerramos, y vamos a editar el archivo Bluetooth

gndx@Firax:~$ sudo gedit /etc/default/bluetooth

El cambio sera minimo solo agregaremos el valor 1a HIDD ENABLED ya que este por defecto esta en 0 debiendo quedar de la siguiente manera.

# Linux 2.6.6 patch or better from bluez.org, and set
# HIDD_ENABLED to 1.
HIDD_ENABLED=1

Guardamos y Cerramos para Reiniciar el servicio.

gndx@Firax:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart
* Restarting Bluetooth services                              [ OK ]

Configurando el Celular.

en mi caso es un Nokia 5300 pero ya he realizado el emparejamiento con Sony Ericsson y Motorola.

Vamos al menú de Bluetooth de tu Celular.
y Buscamos la opción de dispositivos emparejaros o  dispositivos Acoplados

y le dan Acoplar nuevo dispositivo o Buscar dispositivos.

una ves que encuentre el bluetooth de nuestro Ubuntu le damos en emparejar y nos pedirá el PIN que agregamos Con anterioridad

Ya hemos Realizado el emparejamiento Ahora a enviar y recibir archivos sin problemas.

Enlaces Interesantes:

http://javierperez.eu/control-remoto-en-ubuntu-desde-el-movil-por-bluetooth-wifi/

This is a post dedicated to all of you guys who'd like to use Bluetooth HID (Human Interface Device), i.e. keyboard, mouse, etc. in Linux.

In my case the dongle is integrated in iMac (based on a Broadcom BCM2045B2 chipset) and the HID devices are the Apple Aluminium Bluetooth Keyboard and the Apple Mighty mouse, but the concepts here are still valid for other devices.

It takes me a while to have a clear picture of the concepts here, so I wish this guide will make a smooth path for you ;)

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a wireless protocol suited for low power consumption and data transmissions over short distances from fixed and/or mobile devices.

In Bluetooth a master device (the host) can communicate with up to seven active devices in an ad-hoc piconet. Up to 255 further devices can be inactive, or parked, which the master device can bring into active status at any time.

The Bluetooth technology offers a seamless integration of different peripheral and functionality overcoming issues arising from synchronization of these devices.
This is achieved by means of profiles: they provide standards which manufacturers follow to allow devices to use Bluetooth in the intended manner.

At a minimum, each profile specification contains information on the following topics:

• Dependencies on other profiles
• Suggested user interface formats
• Specific parts of the Bluetooth protocol stack used by the profile.

In Linux the Bluetooth support is provided by BlueZ.

The HID Profile

The HID (Human Interface Device) profile provides support for devices such as keyboards, mice, joysticks, as well as support for simple buttons and indicators on other types of devices. It is designed to provide a low latency link, with low power requirements.

Bluetooth HID is a lightweight wrapper of the HID protocol defined for USB which simplifies host implementation by enabling the re-use of some of the existing support for USB HID to also support Bluetooth HID.

Apple, but I have seen a similar approach also in other vendors (like Logitech with their diNovo product family), abstract the Bluetooth HID devices as USB HID (HID mode). This means that the Bluetooth device appear to the system as if it were directly connected to the USB port.

That's the reason why we can use the Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse in Linux even we have not installed the Bluetooth stack at all.

That's a cool approach (consider for example BT keyboard usage in BIOS) but it has some limits: in this mode

• the Bluetooth controller does not act as a standard BT host so other devices (mobiles, printers, etc) cannot be added;
• the HID device hardware is not accessed directly and as a such you are limited to the (basic) function that the manufacturer decided to export to this emulation layer.

In my case, for example, the mighty mouse act as a basic 3 button mouse with no awareness of the really useful wheel on top of it which would allows horizontal scrolling :P

Blue or Red Pill?

For people who just want to use keyboard/mouse without any fancy feature and do not plan to use Bluetooth with other devices (like smartphone) just use the USB HID emulation and you are set.

You are not neither required to install the Bluetooth stack nor did anything else than pair the keyboard and mouse in MacOS. You device will appear to Linux as they were connected directly to a USB port.

[...] and the story ends.

Since we are f**ckin' curious guys :D we would like to have all the possibilities enabled even if we are not ever making use of them.

The procedure here is to set HID emulation to use at boot time (BIOS, rEFIt, others) and then switch to native BT (HCI mode) when Linux loads up, managing HID peripherals with the Bluetooth modules.

Let's Rock'n'Roll

Bluez installation

First of all let's install the Linux's Bluetooth stack. In Debian this is as easy as type ;)

$ sudo apt-get install bluetooth bluez-utils bluez-gnome

The bluez-gnome package contains a passkey agent (which in bluez 3.x replaced the legacy pin-assistant component) which is required to perform associations with the BT devices.

HID to HCI

We can now start scanning the Bluetooth spectrum to see available devices (if any). At a first glance, I received an error:

$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
Inquiry failed: Connection timed out

This is because the device is still in HID mode: this can be easily verified with an lsusb (note the 820a and 820b entries):

$ sudo lsusb -t
[...]
Bus# 1
`-Dev# 1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0001
`-Dev# 4 Vendor 0x0a5c Product 0x4500
|-Dev# 5 Vendor 0x05ac Product 0x820f
|-Dev# 6 Vendor 0x05ac Product 0x820a
`-Dev# 7 Vendor 0x05ac Product 0x820b


where the 0x820f is the Bluetooth adapter, the 0x820a is the HID keyboard and the 0x820b is the HID mouse (simply execute sudo lsusb -v).

In the new iMac, host switch to HCI mode can be done with a dongle reset. In other cases (as in the old iMac which had CSR chipset) there is a utility hid2hci which accomplish this.

Note: after the reset you are going to loose you BT keyboard and mouse since we didn't pair them yet. So you would better find a USB keyboard and mouse to use by that time ;)

$ sudo hciconfig hci0 reset

To make this behavior permanent you can either add an option to one of the /etc/modprobe.d file or patch the kernel by adding the Apple BT ID code in the hci_usb.c file.
Marcel Holtmann (the bluez designer which help me setting-up my device) is taking care of the patching process which is hopefully online soon. In the meantime I inserted an option in my /etc/modprobe.d/local file with a line:

options hci reset=1

If we repeat the commands above we noticed that there are no HID devices in the lsusb output and, if the devices are in discovery state, we now able to find them with an hci scan:

$ sudo lsusb -t
[...]
Bus# 1
`-Dev# 1 Vendor 0x1d6b Product 0x0001
`-Dev# 4 Vendor 0x0a5c Product 0x4500
`-Dev# 5 Vendor 0x05ac Product 0x820f
$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
00:XX:XX:XX:XX:99 alessandro's keyboard
00:XX:XX:XX:XX:2D alessandro's mouse


HID daemon

Since we are now in native BT mode, we need some software to manage HID devices: the HID daemon (hidd).

To start hidd in Debian we simply modify the /etc/default/bluetooth file changing:

• HIDD_ENABLED=0 to HIDD_ENABLED=1
• HID2HCI_ENABLED=1 to HID2HCI_ENABLED=0, since I don't use hid2hci

Restart Bluetooth:

$ sudo invoke-rc.d bluetooth restart

Adding the Keyboard and Mouse

You now need to pair the devices with the computer; remember to unpair them first in MacOS before proceed with the following pairing process.

Let's start from the keyboard: put it in discovery mode (hold down the power key until the small led start to flash) and then type:

$ sudo hidd --connect 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:99

This is the tricky part: as soon you start the hidd command above, on the BT keyboard, enter a pass-code (from 4 to 8 numbers) and finally press Enter to confirm.

You should be notified by GNOME that you need to enter the same pass-phrase in a pop-up window (now with the USB keyboard). If you did it right you should have your keyboard paired and connected now (I need some trials before get everything works).

Let's repeat those steps for the mouse: close and open the led shutter to put it in discovery mode and when prompted enter the pin 0000:

$ sudo hidd --connect 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:2D

The devices can be trusted in the GNOME Bluetooth Manager: right-click on the Bluetooth icon in the GNOME systray and select 'Preferences': in the 'Bonded Devices' area select the two devices and click on 'Set Trusted'.

You should be set!
The devices will automatically reconnect when they go to sleep and when your computer boots up.

Apple devices support

We can now see the two devices connected with hidd managing them:

$ hcitool con
Connections:
< ACL 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:2D handle 13 state 1 lm MASTER
< ACL 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:99 handle 12 state 1 lm MASTER
$ sudo hidd --show
00:XX:XX:XX:XX:2D Apple Computer, Inc. Mighty Mouse [05ac:030c] connected
00:XX:XX:XX:XX:99 Apple Inc. Keyboard [05ac:022d] connected

Those devices are exposed to higher (software) layers as HID devices, both produced by Apple (0x05ac), where one is identified by product ID 0x030c (Apple mighty mouse) and the other one by 0x022d (Apple Wireless keyboard).

In order to correctly handle these devices, the hidp kernel module, which is in charge hid protocol, needs to be aware of some "quirks" the devices use.

The might mouse is supported since 2.6.25 and I wish the BT Aluminium keyboard support will be introduced soon (hopefully in 2.6.26 with the ongoing rework for the Apple devices in hid_apple.c).
In the meantime this is the patch for the BT Aluminium keyboard support:

--- linux-2.6.25/net/bluetooth/hidp/core.c 2008-04-17 03:49:44.000000000 +0100
+++ /usr/local/src/linux-2.6.25/net/bluetooth/hidp/core.c 2008-05-25 13:26:32.000000000 +0100
@@ -678,6 +678,8 @@
} hidp_blacklist[] = {
/* Apple wireless Mighty Mouse */
{ 0x05ac, 0x030c, HID_QUIRK_MIGHTYMOUSE | HID_QUIRK_INVERT_HWHEEL },
+ /* Apple Bluetooth alu ISO keyboard */
+ { 0x05ac, 0x022d, HID_QUIRK_APPLE_HAS_FN | HID_QUIRK_APPLE_ISO_KEYBOARD },

{ } /* Terminating entry */
};

Hi-level device management

I will address the "high-level" device management (console keymap and Xorg) in the near future with a dedicated post.

Open issues

Contrary to what happen in Mac OS, Linux is not able to switch back my device to HID mode and the only way I found to have HID mode at the next system restart is to explicitly shut-down the system (not using a restart): not a big deal ...

TODO

The use of the hidd is now deprecated in favour of the new Input Service. As soon as Debian will switch to this I will have to reconfigure my devices.

References

1. Using the Apple Aluminium Bluetooth Keyboard with Linux
2. Using the Logitech diNovo Media Desktop in Linux
3. Fun with Logitech MX900 Bluetooth receivers

Si tel est votre cas, je suppose que vous seriez ravis d'utiliser votre mini oreillette Bluetooth pour vos conversations Skype tout en gardant le bénéfice de votre 5.1 pour votre musique préférée... Nous allons donc voir comment réaliser cela.

Tout d'abord, installons quelques logiciels :

# apt-get install libopenobex1 bluetooth-alsa bluez-utils bluez-btsco

On lance un module (à noter que pour qu'il se lance à chaque démarrage, il faut l'ajouter à /etc/modules) ainsi qu'un petit logiciel qui permettra de saisir le code d'appareillement lors de la connexion à l'oreillette :

# modprobe snd-bt-sco

$ bluetooth-applet &

Vérifions l'identifiant de votre périphérique Bluetooth interne ainsi que l'adresse MAC de votre oreillette :

$ hcitool dev

Devices:

hci0 00:00:00:00:00:00

$ hcitool scan

Scanning ...

00:00:00:00:00:00 Nokia HS-54w

La première commande vous donnera le 'nom' de votre périph BT ainsi que son adresse (pas utile pour nous), la deuxième commande l'adresse de votre oreillette et son modèle.

On active les services voix sur le périphérique BT (remplacer hci0 par le résultat de 'hcitool dev'):

# hciconfig hci0 voice 0x0060

Et enfin on connecte l'oreillette :

$ btsco -v @mac_de_votre_oreillette

Vous devriez voir apparaître une fenêtre vous demandant le code d'appareillement de votre oreillette Bluetooth, souvent '0000'. Vous pouvez paramétrer Skype pour utiliser votre oreillette. Pour cela allez dans les options (ctrl + o) --> 'Équipements sonores' et modifiez les périphériques pour 'sons entrants' et 'sons sortants' qui devraient normalement laisser apparaître quelque chose du genre 'BT Headset (hw:Headset,0). pour vérifier que tout fonctionne, vous pouvez 'Faire un essai d'appel'.

The thought has always interested me, and I know the simplicity can be replicated with some slightly creative software, but where is it? I've searched high and low for anything related, and there just isn't much around. BlueZ provides an open source bluetooth stack which seems to work, but it leaves out the all critical GUI to interface with the server and hardware. To be a useful product, the user needs to be able to know almost nothing about using it.

While slowly but surely, software makers are moving to the "open" business model, it still raises the question of if it's going to work or not as a profitable business plan. I understand the thought of working endlessly to perfect your offering and then having to struggle thinking whether or not to offer it free and open or not, but isn't getting a large user base the goal of any software offering? If you get the users, you get the traffic, and you get the user base to profit from using other models. Support, add-ons, integration services, and more come to mind as useful ways to monetize your free offerings. If people can get some use out of your product, it's free of charge, and you can modify the software in any way you see fit, it's an all around good model to live by. You can even offer your core technology as an open source offering, and then sell your advance use of the code as a product or service to monetize it.

In my opinion, software makers need to step it up a notch. Remember, MySQL just sold for a reported $1 Billion, so the monetization opportunities are there if you have a good enough product and the people actually use it. I know MySQL is an exception, and it's a basis for which most other open source offerings operate, but it's a still a good indication of where the industry is going...don't you think?

Scatternet is a concept in bluetooth.I am implementing an IEEE paper "SHAPER:A Self Healing Algorithm Producing multi-hop Bluetooth scattERnets".

My SVN can be found at

http://code.google.com/p/openscatternet/

Installiamo i pacchetti necessari

sudo apt-get install bluez-btsco bluetooth-alsa

Accendiamo il nostro auricolare e scopriamo l'indirizzo del dispositivo con il comando

hcitool scan

Effettuamo l'accoppiamento (pairing) con il dispositivo. Questa operazione andrà fatta solo la prima volta.

sudo hcitool cc 00:16:8F:E9:BE:2R

Carichiamo il modulo necessario al funzionamento

sudo modprobe snd-bt-sco

Se volessimo caricare questo modulo in automatico basterà aggiungere il nome del modulo al file /etc/modules

Avviamo il programma per la gestione dell'auricolare bluetooth. Possiamo crearci un icona di avvio se siamo più comodi.

btsco -v 00:16:8F:E9:BE:2R

Ora ci verrò chiesto di inserire un codice, noi inseriamo 0000 che è quello di default per questo tipo di dispositivi.

Adesso nelle impostazioni di skype dovremmo trovare il dispositivo bluetooth e selezionarlo.

Semplice, no?

For example, the package I ordered came with a Logitech M-RBB93 bluetooth wireless mouse. Now, this is a nice piece of hardware. I've had wireless mice before, and they all come with a USB fob that takes most of the joy out of using a wireless mouse. This mouse has an on/off switch on the bottom. That's the extent of the init/shutdown process. I love it! But it didn't work with my laptop out of the box as it should have. I didn't even bother to open the CD that came with it. I would only have found myself disappointed by the instructions, as they nearly always begin with "Press the Start button, and select the Run option..." I hope this will change in the near future - not everyone runs Windows these days.

SLED 10

My new laptop came with SLED 10 (SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, version 10) pre-installed. Now, this Linux variant is clearly designed for non-technical people, as it comes completely configured to work well with several hardware configurations, including my Lenovo T60p. But it still had troubles with unforeseen additions such as the bluetooth mouse. It turns out that SLED 10 does work pretty well with the mouse, but you need to perform a few command-line gymnastic stunts in order to get the laptop to connect. Secretaries and executives will probably just toss the mouse in the garbage can, assuming it's broken. Geeks like me know better.

I didn't even hope that I could get the fingerprint reader working. But it turns out that there's an entire community surrounding this little built-in device, known affectionately as the ThinkFinger. There's a wiki site for configuration that contains very complete information on getting the fingerprint reader working on a variety of platforms, and Ubuntu actually has it's own ThinkFinger community. I must say, it works very well. Sometimes it requires more than one pass to get a good reading, but usually it works on the first try - much of the quality of experience involves training yourself to swipe your finger in just the right way, but it's an easy habit to pick up.

ATI is making big advances in coming to terms with the open source world, but they still have a long way to go. Five years ago, I installed a version of Mandrake Linux on my home computer (dual boot) just to play with it. I had an ASUS NVidia card installed. The desktop graphics came up out of the box in 800 x 600, 8-bit color. I was a bit disappointed at first, but then I decided to dig a bit deeper. I went to NVidia's website, downloaded their latest open source Linux drivers, ran the installer and rebooted. When it came back up, I was viewing my X desktop in 1280 x 1024 24-bit color - perfect! I didn't even have to select the resolution and color depth (although I had plenty of choices).

I can only wish for the same experience with ATI drivers. Five years ago, ATI drivers for Linux were unheard of. The answer to your question was simply this: You bought the wrong video card. Since AMD acquired ATI, things have changed. Video drivers for ATI cards can now be downloaded from AMD's web site. They even (usually) work - if you have the patience and technical prowess to mess with them for long enough. But to the average user, my answer to your question is generally still the same: You bought the wrong video card. Give it a couple of years, and ATI will have caught up to where NVidia was five years ago. Now, don't get me wrong. ATI cards are wonderful, but if you want to take full advantage of them, you'd better stick to Windows.

OpenSuSE 10.2

SLED 10, being designed for non-technical folks, has been tweaked and tested such that many of the processes that have to be done manually in even later opensuse offerings are well integrated and much more automated. However, SLED 10 is old. I'm sorry, but anything older than a year in this industry is out of date. I'm a developer, so I need the latest tools and libraries, and many of these just won't install on SLED 10, so the first thing I did was upgrade to opensuse 10.2.

SLED 10 is actually ahead of opensuse 10.2 when it comes to integration. While the software may be older, the amount of integration testing and tuning is much greater with enterprise-level offerings. Frankly, given what I know about opensuse 10.2, I can't wait for the next version of SLED. I still won't use it, but for my non-technical co-workers, it will be a wonderful improvement.

Well, the devil (as they say) is in the details, so here they are:

Bluetooth Mouse

The bluetooth subsystem on Linux is called bluez. The bluez project is hosted by sourceforge.net. The trouble with the bluez web site and packages is (like many free software offerings) a woeful lack of both technical and non-technical documentation. The maintainers have done a great job of making it easy to build and install. Unpack the tarball, type "sudo configure; make; make install" and you're done. The makefile installs a dozen tools and libraries, and even man pages for most of them. The trouble is that there's no overarching documentation that describes WHY you'd want to use any of them.

Most of the tools are fairly low-level, designed to be configured and consumed by system integrators to provide a good automated end-user experience. The problem, of course being that system integrators in the Linux world generally stop short of the finish line.

Bluetooth is designed to work with a wide variety of devices. Most of these fit into a few categories. Bluetooth mice, for instance, are classified as input devices. The bluez tool that deals with human interface devices is known as hidd - human interface device daemon. This daemon is a system service that is supposed to be started by your system init scripts at boot time. It can also be called by a user logged in as root in order to configure it to bind to your mouse.

If you look on the bottom of your mouse, you'll see what looks like an ethernet MAC address - a six part, colon separated set of values, two hexadecimal digits each (mine is: 00:07:61:6b:92:13). You can tell hidd to bind to your mouse by using a command like this:

>sudo hidd --connect 00:07:61:6b:92:13

Another way of doing this, is to tell hidd to just search for all devices it can see:

>sudo hidd --search

But if you happen to have more than one mouse lying around, it may connect to the wrong one.

The trouble with opensuse 10.2 is that it's about 89 percent there with respect to bluez integration. Sometimes this works, other times you have to resort to tricks like adding the above hidd --connect command to your initialization startup scripts, so that it will connect every time. The hidd daemon is designed to remember connections, and the latest offerings really do work, but you may have to play with it for a while to get it to work consistently.

Fingerprint Reader

Download the latest version of the thinkfinger package (0.3 at the time of this writing) from the sourceforge.net thinkfinger project site. The package is easily compiled and installed. From the root of the directory into which you extracted the package, just run the following sequence of commands:

>su
#configure; make
#make install
#exit
>

Next, you'll want to configure the pam module that comes with the package so that you can log into your desktop using your finger print. Pam modules are configured using the /etc/pam.d/common-auth file. Edit this file with your favorite editor and add the following line BEFORE the line containing the reference to pam_unix2.so:

auth  sufficient  pam_thinkfinger.so

This will cause the PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) library to query the fingerprint reader each time a password is requested. But you're only half done. You have to supply credentials in the form of .bir files. For this, you use the tf-tool command (as root):

>su
#tf-tool --add-user jcalcote
#ThinkFinger 0.3 (http://thinkfinger.sourceforge.net/)
Copyright (C) 2006, 2007 Timo Hoenig <thoenig@suse.de>

Initializing... done.
Please swipe your finger (successful swipes 3/3, failed swipes: 1)... done.
Storing data (/etc/pam_thinkfinger/jcalcote.bir)...done
#exit
>

Note that your .bir file was stored as username.bir in the /etc/pam_thinkfinger directory. Now, if all has gone well, the login prompt should say, "Password or swipe finger:", instead of simply "Password:". You'll also get a prompt like this at the command line when you type "su".

ATI Video Drivers

The Lenovo T60p comes with an integrated ATI Mobility FireGL V5250 video card. The "Mobility" part means it's for laptops, the FireGL part means it's one of their high-end offerings (along side of, but slightly lower than the Radeon series), and the V5250 part means it's close enough to a V5200 that it works with any drivers designed for the V5200 - and that's a good thing, because the drivers don't actually recognize the card model number.

At the time of this writing, the latest driver available on ATI's web site was 8.41.7. The most difficult issue to deal with here is that ATI's website driver guide will not lead you to the latest drivers for your card unless it's a fairly late Radeon series card. This doesn't mean the driver won't work with your FireGL card - it just means that ATI hasn't spent the testing resources on your card with that driver, so they aren't going to lead you to it. Here's the deal: Most of ATI's drivers will work with most of their cards just fine - they're all based on the same or similar chip sets, so the drivers can't really tell the difference. If you want the latest features, you'll have to just get the latest driver and see if it works with your card. In fact, I've found that the 8.41.7 driver does NOT work with my card, but the previous 8.40.4 driver works fine.

Drivers come from ATI in the form of an executable that runs either from the command line, or as a GUI-based application. This application is actually designed to build a variety of driver installation packages for several different flavors and versions of Linux. For instance, it can build an rpm package for opensuse or redhat. It can also build .deb packages for debian.

To use the driver generator, use the following command-line syntax:

>su
#ati-driver-installer-8.40.4-x86.x86_64.run --help          (optional)
#ati-driver-installer-8.40.4-x86.x86_64.run --listpkg       (optional)
#ati-driver-installer-8.40.4-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE102-IA32

This will generate an rpm installer package for your system. Note that the first two ati* commands are only for your information. The --listpkg option will display a list of all packages that CAN be generated by the package generator. Choose the one that's closest to your system type. After this command has completed, you'll find an rpm package named fglrx_7_1_0_SUSE102-8.40.4-1.i386.rpm in the same directory.

Here's the tricky part. This installer is complicated. It actually builds a kernel module as part of the installation process, which means that you'll have to have kernel source and development packages installed in order to install this package. So ensure that you have the appropriate kernel development libraries installed on your system.

The opensuse community and ATI itself provides a YUM repository for various flavors of the opensuse 10.2 kernel (found at http://www2.ati.com/suse/10.2 - note that this site is not accessible via the web - only through YUM). This package is NOT the same as the one you just generated. It's pre-configured to run against a specific kernel version with a specific set of patches. Personally, I like the approach taken by this ATI package generator better. If you install kernel patches, you'll either have to get matching updated community drivers, or simply reinstall from this rpm you just generated. It will rebuild the kernel module against the latest libraries and headers installed with those patches. If the kernel changes too much, then you'll need to get a later ATI driver that's designed to work with the latest kernel.

Now install the drivers with this set of commands (It's best if you do this from a tty console - press Ctrl-Alt-F1):

Login: root
Password:
#init 3
#rpm -ivh  fglrx_7_1_0_SUSE102-8.40.4-1.i386.rpm
#sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx
#init 5

You should now be running with your ATI drivers. To test your configuration, open a terminal window, and type:

>su
#glxinfo

You should see the following lines among the output:

...
client glx vendor string: ATI
...
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5250
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (2.0.6747 (8.40.4))

ATI drivers are not as well integrated as they could be. They don't hook into sax2 so that you can toggle settings and enable or disable 3D mode. However, they do allow you to configure clone and xinerama modes from sax2, if you want. This situation can cause some frustration until you understand it. Basically, 3D hardware acceleration can't be disabled, regardless of what sax2 tells you its current state is.

To prove this to yourself, run the fgl_glxgears program that's installed with the firegl drivers. You should see a spinning cube whose faces each contain a set of gears spinning within the plane of the face. You can't do this in software, so if you have any sort of smooth performance in this demo, then you're definitely runnning with hardware acceleration enabled. Note that there's a more basic program called glxgears. This one shows a simple set of gears spinning in one plane.

Compiz to Beryl to Compiz-Fusion

Of course, after getting your 3D accelerated drivers installed, you'll want to do something with your system that will prove the worth of all that effort every minute that you use your computer. This is where compiz comes in. You know all that yummy eye candy that Mac OSX provides for its user experience? Well, Linux isn't that far behind. To quote the compiz.org home page:

"Compiz is a compositing window manager that uses 3D graphics acceleration via OpenGL. It provides various new graphical effects and features on any desktop environment, including Gnome and KDE."

To enable the required OpenGL features, you'll have to switch your display manager server from xorg to xgl. The default display manager server is the one that comes with the xorg system. It's tried and true, and doesn't often have a problem. In the vernacular, it's stable. The xgl display manager server uses OpenGL to do everything done manually by the xorg server. The community calls xgl "experimental", but the fact is it's pretty good lately.

To change from xorg to xgl, you need to use your system configuration editor (YaST | System | etc/sysconfig Editor). From the menu on the left, choose Desktop | Display Manager | DISPLAYMANAGER_XSERVER. Change the setting on the right from "Xorg" to "Xgl".

Close your applications and restart XWindows by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. If everything comes up as before, then you're set. Now go to your main menu and from the section entitled "Look and Feel", select "Desktop Effects". The information in this dialog is a bit disconcerting. It tries to tell you that you can't enable desktop effects (compiz) because your hardware is not recognized. It also tries to tell you that 3D acceleration is not enabled. Don't forget that ATI drivers have bypassed the sax2 hooks for this feature. So applications that use sax data to determine 3D acceleration state are going to be misled into believing it's not enabled. But just select "Enable Desktop Effects" at the bottom anyway (if it's not already done for you). When you exit this dialog, you should see your windows doing cool stunts (sometimes without your aid or approval).

Probably because of the "experimental" nature of Xgl, occasionally you will lose your window manager. The effects of this are simple - the title bars on all of the windows on your screen will disappear, making it difficult at best to accomplish anything. Easily remedied however - just restart XWindows (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace). Unless you've really hosed things up, it should restart the window manager correctly.

OpenSuSE 10.3

After all of that (and that took me a month of research), opensuse 10.3 was released on the 3rd of October. I'm a bleeding edge sort of guy (if you couldn't tell by now), so I immediately upgraded my 10.2 system. Believe it or not, nearly everything worked without a lot of tweaking and configuring in opensuse 10.3.

The only problem I'm having at this point is with my wireless network card. I got myself into a situation where there were two entries for my wireless card in the Network Devices dialog. One of them came from the udev hardware detection subsystem, and was listed as "unconfigured". The other was a copy of the detected card that was listed as "DHCP" (meaning, configured to use DHCP). When I would try to delete the configured entry, and then configure the detected entry, it would look good until I closed the dialog and then rentered it, whereupon it would look as it did before. The solution to this problem finally presented itself accidentally, as I tried to do what I'd tried before, but in reverse order. That is, I first configured the detected card, and THEN deleted the originally configured card. For some reason, this worked.

One other problem I'm having with wi-fi is that I can't seem to connect to my wireless network at work. At work, we have a wireless network with an unadvertised or "hidden" ssid - the network identifier. In order to connect to a network with a hidden ssid, you have to know the value of the ssid and specify in when you attempt to connect. I just can't connect - I still can't, and I haven't got a clue why not. I can only assume there's some sort of bug in the wireless drivers for 10.3 because I can connect just fine at home, where my ssid is advertised. I've googled this one for hours, but apparently no one else has had this problem, or they're not speaking up. In truth, I did find some references to a problem like this last November - nearly a year ago, but it was quickly resolved with a patch to the wlan sub-system. Apparently, the bug is back with a vengeance - at least on my system.

But these things tend to sort themselves out in fairly quick order. People don't like to go without network access, and whether or not they're talking about it, this sort of defect is often more wide-spread than it appears at first glance.

Regarding ATI video drivers and opensuse 10.3; ATI provides a web-based repository for 10.3 drivers along side of their 10.2 repository, but be aware that it provides an rpm package with the 8.41.7 drivers. You'll perhaps recall that these drivers didn't work with my V5250 FireGL card, and this repository version is no exception. I tried them, and then had to back off to the 8.40.4 drivers. YMMV.

The bluetooth subsystem is substantially enhanced on 10.3. I was able to bind to my mouse using (get this) a GUI interface! If you're coming from a Windows background, you're no doubt laughing, but then I'm not talking to you, am I? :)

The fingerprint reader actually has a YaST panel plugin in 10.3. The installer detects the fingerprint reader and ensures that the appropriate packages are installed, so you don't have to go looking for it.

Despite the fact that both bluetooth and biometric hardware integration is much better in 10.3, I still upgraded these two packages from bluez and thinkfinger - probably because I'm a glutton for punishment. But the latest packages do provide some small bit of extended functionality.

All in all, I'm so pleased with opensuse 10.3 laptop, that my co-workers think I'm weirder than I really am, walking around the office with a big grin on my face. But they're not laughing at me when I show them something cool that my machine can do that theirs can't.

Now let me say a few words about what has happened in the first half of 2007. After being directly involved with BlueZ and CarMan development I went to Germany for three months to do a consulting work on Maemo and embedded Linux in general. Overall, it was a nice experience but I'm really glad to be back in Brazil among my friends and relatives.

I'm back in Brazil for over a month now and I'm working on the new version of Canola with the rest of the team. I'm working in the infrastructure of this new Canola in Python and also in the low-level integration of CarMan (see this post from Marcelo). I'll try to post later some of the glitches and things I've been working on lately. Stay tuned, because we're working hard to make this new Canola rock even more! :-)

So I wanted to remote control my favoured music player Amarok. I found a ready made HID configuration by tnt, but unfortunately the keystrokes where not the default Amarok global hotkeys' ones and also conflict with the default Gnome shortcuts. With the help of Stefan Tomanek's great website and the HID Usage Tables Reference (page 53) I modified the Remote Control keys to match the Amarok defaults.

A ready to use .hid file is now available from my Box.net share.

If I wasn't lazy right now, I would provide the new HID profile ready to use - an uncompressed tar archive containing the GUI screen as JPEG image and the HID configuration as a UNIX style XML file. But I'll have to add the GPL stuff first. So for now here's the diff of the key codes:

[scheff@p512o amarok-hid]$ diff *kcf*
6c6
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "0A" USAGEID = "56"/> <!-- REWIND -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "05" USAGEID = "50"/> <!-- REWIND -->
11c11
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "08" USAGEID = "06"/> <!-- PLAY -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "05" USAGEID = "4A"/> <!-- PLAY -->
16c16
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "0A" USAGEID = "57"/> <!-- FAST FORWARD -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "05" USAGEID = "4F"/> <!-- FAST FORWARD -->
21c21
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "08" USAGEID = "1D"/> <!-- PREV -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "05" USAGEID = "4B"/> <!-- PREV -->
26c26
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "08" USAGEID = "19"/> <!-- STOP -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "05" USAGEID = "16"/> <!-- STOP -->
31c31
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "08" USAGEID = "05"/> <!-- NEXT -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "05" USAGEID = "4E"/> <!-- NEXT -->
36c36
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "08" USAGEID = "10"/> <!-- MUTE -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "05" USAGEID = "10"/> <!-- MUTE -->
41c41
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "08" USAGEID = "57"/> <!-- VOL UP -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "01" USAGEID = "57"/> <!-- VOL UP -->
46c46
<         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "08" USAGEID = "56"/> <!-- VOL DOWN -->
---
>         <KEYBOARD MODIFIERS = "01" USAGEID = "56"/> <!-- VOL DOWN -->
50c50
< </SONY_ERICSSON_REMOTE_CONTROL_CONFIGURATION>
---
> </SONY_ERICSSON_REMOTE_CONTROL_CONFIGURATION>
\ Kein Zeilenumbruch am Dateiende.

To get this running on my Fedora Core 5 box, all I had to do was uploading the HID configuration to my mobile:

obex_push 5 00:11:22:33:44:55 AmaroK.hid

Then on the phone start the remote choosing my FC5 box as target and connect my HID Server with:

hidd --connect 00:11:22:33:44:55

To remove the connection again, use:

hidd --unplug 00:11:22:33:44:55

Don't know if that's necessary, but I had paired phone and PC before.

Have fun! And may the power-source be with you! :]

ChangeLog

[070429 Fix minor typo. Add download link. Add photo.]

Well, first of all, OLS was really fun. Meeting people, seeing some of the most famous persons like Alan Cox and Andrew Morton and getting to know what are the trends in Linux kernel development now was great. I can say that new file systems, virtualization and power management were the main topics. I've also met Iñaky Pérez-González and we've talked about contributing code to the UWB project. Let's see if we can work that out. :-)

OLS itself was great, but going to Ottawa and coming back home turned out to be really painful. We missed a flight on our way to Ottawa and arrived there only 28 hours after we left Recife. However, coming back home was even worse. It took us 48 hours to come back home because United Airlines screwed us badly by overbooking our connection in Washington. Since they have only two flights to Brazil, we had to wait a whole day to fly to Sao Paulo. But this wasn't enough for United, we weren't confirmed for the next flight, we're only waitlisted and that meant we could stay another day in Washington! This was really disrespectful. Arriving in Sao Paulo was another nightmare, because we've already lost our connection there (of course) and had to wait several hours to fly to Recife. After all this drama we've managed to get back home safe. United sucked big time. Grrrr...

Going to OLS was really good and now I have lots of things to do for BlueZ (thanks to Marcel Holtmann :-) and lots of ideas related to virtualization. I'm thankful that INdT sent me there. It's time to work hard now..

I think it's nice to travel but coming back home is even better! I really missed Dotty (my beautiful girl and future wife :-) while I was in Ottawa. Maybe we can go there together some other time.. :-)