Connecting a Bluetooth device for serial communication on Arch Linux.

bluetooth_serial.md

The following are instructions for connecting a Bluetooth device for serial communication on Arch Linux using BlueZ 5.31.

Prerequisites

The following packages are required:

• bluez: bluetoothd
• bluez-utils: bluetoothctl, rfcomm

Pair

1. Start daemon: systemctl start bluetooth

2. Pair using bluetoothctl:

   power on
   agent on
   scan on
   ... wait ...
   scan off
   pair <dev>
   

3. Create serial device: rfcomm bind 0 <dev>

You should now have /dev/rfcomm0.

Unpair

1. Remove serial device: rfcomm release 0

2. Unpair using bluetoothctl:

   remove <dev>
   power off
   

3. Stop daemon: systemctl stop bluetooth

Troubleshooting

Check rfkill list to make sure that the Bluetooth device is not blocked.

@adlerweb Same here, any replacement for rfcomm?

Not that I am aware of, but if you find one, please share it here and on unix.stackexchange

Good, with my current version of Debian, Blueman applet fails after pair, it did can't create the serial device (rfcomm bind), but with bluetoothctl works fine. Thanks.

Weird for issue on Archlinux.
After pairing, when I attempt to connect via bluetoothctl itself, I get these:

[bluetooth]# connect 38:0B:3C:XX:XX:XX
Attempting to connect to 38:0B:3C:XX:XX:XX
[CHG] Device 38:0B:3C:XX:XX:XX Connected: yes
Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed
[CHG] Device 38:0B:3C:XX:XX:XX Connected: no

Made me scratch my head for an hour when I found this gist and just rfcomm bind 0 <dev> worked.

EDIT: Just figured out the even the wiki suggests to only pair. Damn.