GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 731975
Bluetooth keyboard cannot reconnect properly after power saving disconnects the keyboard
Last modified: 2017-11-03 20:32:32 UTC
A recent kernel upgrade in Fedora 20 has made my Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard almost useless. I am running rhughes Gnome 3.12, to get around an earlier 3.10 problem where the PIN dialogue would not appear during pairing. 3.12 has been working fine since I upgraded. However this recent update has changed the behaviour of Gnome, making the keyboard almost useless, but certainly a pain in the butt. The keyboard has a hard-coded timeout whereby if no key action occurs for a period of time (3 minutes I think) the keyboard disconnects and enters into a low power state. Normally when I hit a key the keyboard wakes up, reconnects, and starts working fine. After the recent reboot that included a kernel upgrade, the keyboard does not wake up properly. When I hit the keyboard it reconnects (the Bluetooth icon appears in the top right tray). The keyboard works for about 3 seconds, meaning I can type. Then the keyboard disconnects (the Bluetooth icon goes away). I can continue to make it reconnect in this manner for as long as I want to, but it doesn't stay connected properly. I can solve the problem by removing the device in the Bluetooth dialogue, and then re-pairing it. Then the keyboard connects and works normally until the power saving mode kicks in again. Here's the bug related to the 3.10 Gnome problem where the PIN is not displayed, if needed for reference: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725865
Sorry I took this lonmg to answer your bug, but this looks like a problem with bluez's bluetoothd, not with gnome-bluetooth. Unless the keyboard setup is badly managed by gnome-bluetooth, which is pretty unlikely given that the keyboard works, at least for a limited period of time, bluetoothd and the kernel are the ones handling the Bluetooth connections, and gnome-bluetooth is not involved. That being said, and because it took me ages to respond to this bug, here are a few options: - The keyboard went back to working great, or it's now in the trash. You can leave this bug closed. - The keyboard is still broken, but you're running an older Linux, such as an old Debian stable, or Ubuntu LTS. Best would be for you to test the keyboard out with a newer Linux, using a Live USB distribution is an option here, for testing at least. - You have a very current distribution, and the keyboard still doesn't work properly. My sincerest apologies. As the problem is unlikely to be with gnome-bluetooth, you can test pairing and behaviour with the "bluetoothctl" command-line tool: After launching bluetoothctl, and putting the keyboard in discoverable/pairing mode, run "scan". You should see the device appear in the list. Now copy/paste the keyboard's address, and run "pair XXXXX" where XXXXX is that keyboard's address. Use as per usual, test connection and disconnection. The changing state of the connection should appear in the tool. Is it working? If not, you should be able to run bluetoothd, as root, with the "-d -n" options. This should print out tons of messages. Reproduce the pairing and the initial connection/disconnection problem, and Ctrl+C it. Hopefully, that'll give us more of an insight into the problem. Feel free to post the logs here once you've gathered them. Ultimately, the problem should be reported to the linux-bluetooth@ mailing-list. (oh, and verify the keyboard's batteries!)
Thanks Bastien. I no longer have this problem.