Is there any way to use a wireless (bluetooth) keyboard without starting the gui?
Upon booting the bios says ‘no keyboard detected’. Then the boot screen appears but there’s no way to make any entry from the keyboard.
Is there a way around this or will I have to use a wired keyboard in runlevel 3.
Here you go (bluetoothctl):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bluetooth_keyboard
Seems to me that this article is about connecting to a bluetooth adapter from the command line. My issue is that the bios doesn’t see a keyboard upon boot, so there is no way to stop the normal boot process and switch to runlevel 3.
According to that article the setup needs to be done one time to establish a pairing but I’m able to do that with the gui. It still sounds like I’d have to use a wired keyboard to get to runlevel 3, for example, to install an nvidia driver.
@pilotgi Do you have an option for Legacy USB in the system BIOS, that may help, else AFAIK there is no bluetooth support for GRUB…
Yes, I already checked for that. I also did a search for bluetooth in bios and there were no results. I guess I’ll just keep a wired keyboard handy.
@pilotgi Not sure if systemd-boot has more options…
Sorry, I missed what you were trying to achieve. I thought you were just looking for a means to use it in multi-user.target mode.
FWIW, I have had Logitech wireless keyboards which work from boot, but they don’t require pairing as such.
Where would I find systemd-boot?
@pilotgi https://en.opensuse.org/Systemd-boot
I see this is probably worth a read first https://forums.opensuse.org/t/need-the-bluetooth-activated-at-boot-before-login/102275
But your title is about “runlevel 3”. And boot ( think you are talking about Grub) is of course way before the kernel is loaded. let alone that it reaches runlevel 3).
This may not be a bluetooth issue, but a keyboard firmware issue. My brother bought me an expensive wired keyboard last year like one he bought for himself and loved, backlit, with great feel. But, it was useless before the kernel loads, so I could not get into BIOS or use a bootloader menu regardless of any BIOS USB or keyboard settings. I didn’t pursue it because I have so many non-UEFI computers, and neglected to test it with any computers with UEFI-only enabled. I suspect it may have been OK with those had I tried. You may wish to contact the manufacturer to report yours defective, or return it to vendor, and find another to try.
I appreciate you pointing out that I mistakenly used the word boot instead of startup and that I should have stated that I can’t use the keyboard to GET to runlevel3. Maybe one of the mods can edit the title for me.
After some more research, I’m guessing that only motherboards with built-in bluetooth may have a chance of the bios detecting this keyboard at startup.
Title adjusted.