I have just bought a bluetooth keyboard KEY0103. A great little device which works without any hassle with a Windows 10 laptop, a Samsung android phone and an Amazon Firestick.
Unfortunately, it is not working with xubuntu which is my intended system. It did connect briefly with one system but it fails subsequently with both my xbuntu systems - I can ‘trust’ it but not ‘pair’ with it - “Failed to pair”. I expected to be given a key to input as with W10 and Android.
I believe that the keyboard has been exonerated - the frequent driver crash reports point firmly at *buntu.
Have any of you seen this with any Linux variant and have a solution?
Alternatively, can you recommend a bluetooth dongle which would connect easily in this environment?
that sucks ,I guess they were serious when they said what it wil work with …
yeah,i done simular when ordering stuff,just not reading close enough …they say what it will work with, If its still in the returnable timeline,contact them to see if you can return it , or purchace something like a Flirc universal dongle ,they are not cheap ! Flirc USB - Flirc
Do you have any other bluetooth devices working with yout Xubuntu system, and are you using a dongle or on-board BT controller?
Trying to narrow down if it’s a “this keyboard” issue or a “Xubuntu BT” issue (I find my plain-old-Ubuntu box needs some gentle persuasion to talk nicely to my headphones)
Thanks for the reply. I’m using the on-board BT controller (with both the NUC and with a Fuji i3 laptop) but would get a USB dongle like a shot if I knew what would work.
I can connect a little Bush BT speaker without problem - bluetoothctl reports success and the device bleeps when connecting or disconnecting.
The odd thing is that tyhe keyboard worked once, though fleetingly!
Phil
Another symptom: On my fuji laptop I have lots of files in /var/crash all associated with blue_tray.1000.
A crash dump prompt says:
Blueman tray crashed FileNotFoundError in Check_single_instance /home/user/.cache/blueman-tray-1000
That file exists and is dated just a few minutes ago at a time I was not trying anything with bluetooth - it contains 1313, the pid for blueman-tray:
ps aux | grep 1313
phil 1313 0.0 1.0 368144 40960 ? Sl 16:50 0:00 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/blueman-tray
Not sure where that gets us!
Two copies of it trying to run perhaps?
Phil
Hmm, I don’t appear to have blueman on my Ubuntu box, although google suggests that’s a bit of a known issue.
I’m wondering if it has some weird limit on how many devices it can pair with, which is why it doesn’t think it’s pairable? In which case, is there a way of unpairing from one of the other devices?
Thanks for the suggestion –a good one! I assumed a worst case limit of one and disconnected the keyboard from all the other computers.
First try with xbuntu:
Sudo bluetoothctl
Trust 20:20…
Pair 20:20…
Passkey given – typed it in: nothing!
Next try:
Remove 20:20:…
Devices - Not listed
Scan on - #Did function-bluetooth on keyboard. Blue light flashes. Device is then listed.
Trust 20:20…
Connect 20:20 # Note no pair command. #Success! It works. Keyboard working!!! Dancing round the room! Used keyboard to type:
Exit #Bluetoothctl exited
Unfortunately, the keyboard then stopped working!
It is clear that my intuition or background reading have failed me.
My next steps will be to try the keyboard again with Windows and check that all the numeric keys are working and also do more background reading.
Sadly, it isn’t quite that simple. Bluetooth under Ubuntu seems to be giving lots of people problems, especially it seems under 20.04. Logs suggest that HIDP host is failing.
I have a dongle on order which I hope will fix things. Thanks for you advice and encouragement.
Phil