I installed opensuse 11.4 and everything works great except for bluetooth. It is a Atheros AR9285 wifi+bluetooth mini pcie card. From what I can find on the web this card is supported in linux with the ath9k driver.
Problem is opensuse uses the correct driver for the wifi part but load the incorrect driver for bluetooth, the ath3k driver.
Anyone run in to this or can offer and help?
Thanks
So, from this Dell support forum thread it didn’t look good. However, I learnt that your chipset details for your device are as follows
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0cf3:3002 Atheros Communications, Inc.
What makes you think the ath3k module is not the right driver for your bluetooth hardware? What happens when you try to load it?
modprobe ath3k
This Gentoo user wrote a patch to deal with this chipset (in case the version you have doesn’t play nicely with your device).
opensuse says “no Bluetooth adapters present” ubuntu and fedora both say “can not turn bluetooth on”
This is the page that lead me to believe that it needed to have the ath9k driver:
btcoex - Linux Wireless
Ok, well I’m not familiar with this device, but maybe confirm with
/sbin/lspci -nnk
lsusb
Post the lines pertaining to your bluetooth device.
/sbin/lspci -nnk
does not return any info on the bluetooth part of the card only the wifi part:
12:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [168c:002b] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0205]
Kernel driver in use: ath9k
lsusb
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0cf3:3002 Atheros Communications, Inc.
YaST > Hardware information shows:
49: USB 00.0: 11500 Bluetooth Device
[Created at usb.122]
Unique ID: Bgjr.r6C3LV3+GJA
Parent ID: FKGF.0j9+vWlqL56
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.5/2-1.5:1.0
SysFS BusID: 2-1.5:1.0
Hardware Class: bluetooth
Model: “Atheros Bluetooth Device”
Hotplug: USB
Vendor: usb 0x0cf3 “Atheros Communications, Inc.”
Device: usb 0x3002
Revision: “0.01”
Speed: 12 Mbps
Module Alias: “usb:v0CF3p3002d0001dcE0dsc01dp01icE0isc01ip01”
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: ath3k is active
Driver Activation Cmd: “modprobe ath3k”
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: btusb is active
Driver Activation Cmd: “modprobe btusb”
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #45 (Hub)
I bought this laptop because Dell sold it with Ubuntu pre-install. My thinking was, wipe the OS, slam opensuse on it and go. That’s what I get for thinking 
I bought this laptop because Dell sold it with Ubuntu pre-install. My thinking was, wipe the OS, slam opensuse on it and go. That’s what I get for thinking
No worries. We’ll see if we can’t get this working for your openSUSE install. (BTW, what Ubuntu version did it come with)?
Well, your Dell definitely uses an internal usb-connected bluetooth chipset (as confirmed by lsusb and YaST>Hardware>Hardware Information results) as I suspected.
Try
modrprobe ath3k
then
dmesg|tail
It may be worth executing this command too (to get a handle on this)
/usr/sbin/hciconfig
This looks promising
49: USB 00.0: 11500 Bluetooth Device
[Created at usb.122]
Unique ID: Bgjr.r6C3LV3+GJA
Parent ID: FKGF.0j9+vWlqL56
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.5/2-1.5:1.0
SysFS BusID: 2-1.5:1.0
Hardware Class: bluetooth
Model: "Atheros Bluetooth Device"
Hotplug: USB
Vendor: usb 0x0cf3 "Atheros Communications, Inc."
Device: usb 0x3002
Revision: "0.01"
Speed: 12 Mbps
Module Alias: "usb:v0CF3p3002d0001dcE0dsc01dp01icE0isc01ip01"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: ath3k is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe ath3k"
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: btusb is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe btusb"
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #45 (Hub)
I wonder if btusb needs to be loaded or unloaded…
Actually mine came with windows 7 something. Dell made me down grade to windows 7 in order to upgrade to a core i3 CPU. They only offer Ubuntu with a Celeron CPU. The Ubuntu preload they offer is a dell version of 10.4 LTS. I read in the Ubuntu forums that people who upgraded to later versions made their bluetooth stop working.
Dell must have done something to their image to make it work.
“dmesg|tail” gives me a bunch of wlan0 info.
“/usr/sbin/hciconfig” does not return anything.
Why is it that YaST returns bluetooth info but hciconfig does not?
I don’t think I am understanding what hciconfig does.
I don’t think I am understanding what hciconfig does.
Simple explanation:
hciconfig is used to configure Bluetooth devices. hciX is the name of a Bluetooth device installed in the system. If hciX is not given, hciconfig prints name and basic information about all the Bluetooth devices installed in the system.
For more info
man hciconfig
or
man hciconfig
I was suggesting you type it to get output like mine (hopefully)
hci0: Type: BR/EDR Bus: USB
BD Address: 00:1E:37:B5:D4:B7 ACL MTU: 1017:8 SCO MTU: 64:8
UP RUNNING PSCAN
RX bytes:965 acl:0 sco:0 events:27 errors:0
TX bytes:361 acl:0 sco:0 commands:27 errors:0
So you did ‘modprobe ath3k’, then ‘dmesg|tail’ and only got references to wlan0?
linux-0n53:/home/shane # modprobe ath3k
linux-0n53:/home/shane # dmesg|tail
25.565066] EXT4-fs (sda6): re-mounted. Opts: acl,user_xattr,commit=0
25.570624] EXT4-fs (sda7): re-mounted. Opts: acl,user_xattr,commit=0
49.517049] wlan0: authenticate with 00:16:01:16:3e:24 (try 1)
49.519117] wlan0: authenticated
49.519155] wlan0: associate with 00:16:01:16:3e:24 (try 1)
49.521680] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:16:01:16:3e:24 (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=5)
49.521684] wlan0: associated
49.522533] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
56.046286] bootsplash: status on console 0 changed to on
60.424205] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
linux-0n53:/home/shane # /usr/sbin/hciconfig
linux-0n53:/home/shane #