Bluetooth headset
Currently, Arch Linux supports the A2DP profile (Audio Sink) for remote audio playback with the default installation.
Contents
-
1 Headset via Bluez5/PulseAudio
- 1.1 Configuration via CLI
- 1.2 Configuration via GNOME Bluetooth
- 1.3 LDAC/aptX
-
1.4 Troubleshooting
- 1.4.1 Bad sound / Static noise / "Muddy" sound
- 1.4.2 Selected audio profile, but headset inactive and audio cannot be redirected
- 1.4.3 Pairing fails with AuthenticationFailed
- 1.4.4 Pairing works, but connecting does not
- 1.4.5 Connecting works, but there are sound glitches all the time
- 1.4.6 Connecting works, but I cannot play sound
- 1.4.7 Connecting works, sound plays fine until headphones become idle, then stutters
- 1.4.8 UUIDs has unsupported type
- 1.4.9 PC shows device as paired, but is not recognized by device
- 1.4.10 Device connects, then disconnects after a few moments
- 1.4.11 Apple Airpods have low volume
- 1.4.12 HSP problem: the bluetooth sink and source are created, but no audio is being transmitted
- 2 Headset via Bluez5/bluez-alsa
- 3 Legacy documentation: ALSA, bluez5 and PulseAudio method
- 4 Switch between HSP/HFP and A2DP setting
- 5 See also
Headset via Bluez5/PulseAudio
Install pulseaudio-alsa, pulseaudio-bluetooth and bluez-utils providing the bluetoothctl
utility.
Configuration via CLI
Start the bluetooth.service
systemd unit.
Now we can use the bluetoothctl command line utility to pair and connect. For troubleshooting and more detailed explanations of bluetoothctl see the Bluetooth article. Run
$ bluetoothctl
to be greeted by its internal command prompt. Then enter:
[bluetooth]# power on [bluetooth]# agent on [bluetooth]# default-agent [bluetooth]# scan on
Now make sure that your headset is in pairing mode. It should be discovered shortly. For example,
[NEW] Device 00:1D:43:6D:03:26 Lasmex LBT10
shows a device that calls itself "Lasmex LBT10" and has MAC address "00:1D:43:6D:03:26". We will now use that MAC address to initiate the pairing:
[bluetooth]# pair 00:1D:43:6D:03:26
After pairing, you also need to explicitly connect the device:
[bluetooth]# connect 00:1D:43:6D:03:26
If you are getting a connection error org.bluez.Error.Failed
retry by killing existing PulseAudio daemon first:
$ pulseaudio -k [bluetooth]# connect 00:1D:43:6D:03:26
Finally, if you want to automatically connect to this device in the future:
[bluetooth]# trust 00:1D:43:6D:03:26
If everything works correctly, you now have a separate output device in PulseAudio.
OFF
, A2DP
, HFP
) in the "Configuration" tab of pavucontrol.You can now redirect any audio through that device using the "Playback" and "Recording" tabs of pavucontrol.
You can now disable scanning again and exit the program:
[bluetooth]# scan off [bluetooth]# exit
Setting up auto connection
To make your headset auto connect you need to enable PulseAudio's switch-on-connect module. Do this by adding the following lines to /etc/pulse/default.pa
:
/etc/pulse/default.pa
# automatically switch to newly-connected devices load-module module-switch-on-connect
Now make bluetoothctl trust your Bluetooth headset by running trust 00:1D:43:6D:03:26 inside the bluetoothctl console to prevent errors similar to:
bluetoothd[487]: Authentication attempt without agent bluetoothd[487]: Access denied: org.bluez.Error.Rejected
[bluetooth]# trust 00:1D:43:6D:03:26
By default, your Bluetooth adapter will not power on after a reboot. The former method by using hciconfig hci0 up
is deprecated, see the release note. Now you just need to add the line AutoEnable=true
in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
at the bottom in the [Policy]
section:
/etc/bluetooth/main.conf
[Policy] AutoEnable=true
Media controls
To use the media controls they may be forwarded to MPRIS2, where they can be picked up by media players that support mpris for external control. Install bluez-utils and run
$ mpris-proxy
In order to start up mpris-proxy in the background and/or when your system starts, you may create a systemd user script
~/.config/systemd/user/mpris-proxy.service
[Unit] Description=Forward bluetooth midi controls via mpris2 so they are picked up by supporting media players [Service] Type=simple ExecStart=/usr/bin/mpris-proxy [Install] WantedBy=default.target
Then start it
$ systemctl --user start mpris-proxy
and enable it to start at login
$ systemctl --user enable mpris-proxy
Configuration via GNOME Bluetooth
You can use GNOME Bluetooth graphical front-end to easily configure your bluetooth headset.
First, you need to be sure that bluetooth.service
systemd unit is running.
Open GNOME Bluetooth and activate the bluetooth. After scanning for devices, you can connect to your headset selecting it on the device list. You can directly access to sound configuration panel from the device menu. On the sound panel, a new sink should appear when your device is connected.
LDAC/aptX
LDAC/aptX codec support can be enabled by installing pulseaudio-modules-bt-gitAUR and libldacAUR. See its project page for configuration tips.
Troubleshooting
Bad sound / Static noise / "Muddy" sound
If you experience bad sound quality with your headset, it could in all likelihood be because your headset is not set to the correct profile. See #Switch between HSP/HFP and A2DP setting to solve the problem.
Selected audio profile, but headset inactive and audio cannot be redirected
Deceptively, this menu is available before the device has been connected; annoyingly it will have no effect. The menu seems to be created as soon as the receiver recognizes the device.
Make sure to run bluetoothctl (with sudo/as root) and connect the device manually. There may be configuration options to remove the need to do this each time, but neither pairing nor trusting induce automatic connecting for me.
Pairing fails with AuthenticationFailed
If pairing fails, you can try enabling or disabling SSPMode with:
# btmgmt ssp off
or
# btmgmt ssp on
You may need to turn off BlueTooth while you run this command.
Pairing works, but connecting does not
You might see the following error in bluetoothctl:
[bluetooth]# connect 00:1D:43:6D:03:26 Attempting to connect to 00:1D:43:6D:03:26 Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed
To further investigate, have a look at the log via one of the following commands:
# systemctl status bluetooth # journalctl -n 20
You might see a message like this:
bluetoothd[5556]: a2dp-sink profile connect failed for 00:1D:43:6D:03:26: Protocol not available
This may be due to the pulseaudio-bluetooth package not being installed. Install it if it missing, then restart pulseaudio.
It can also be due to permission, especially if starting pulseaudio as root allows you to connect. Add your user to the lp group, then restart pulseaudio.
See /etc/dbus-1/system.d/bluetooth.conf
for reference.
If the issue is not due to the missing package, the problem in this case is that PulseAudio is not catching up. A common solution to this problem is to restart PulseAudio. Note that it is perfectly fine to run bluetoothctl as root while PulseAudio runs as user. After restarting PulseAudio, retry to connect. It is not necessary to repeat the pairing.
If restarting PulseAudio does not work, you need to load module-bluetooth-discover.
# pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover
The same load-module command can be added to /etc/pulse/default.pa
.
If that still does not work, or you are using PulseAudio's system-wide mode, also load the following PulseAudio modules (again these can be loaded via your default.pa
or system.pa
):
module-bluetooth-policy module-bluez5-device module-bluez5-discover
It's also possible there are no write permissions for the owner of /var/lib/bluetooth. If this is the case, you may get the device to work by removing and re-pairing it, but the issue will return after rebooting. Restoring write permissions fixes this issue:
chmod -R u+w /var/lib/bluetooth
Connecting works, but there are sound glitches all the time
This is very likely to occur when the Bluetooth and the WiFi share the same chip as they share the same physical antenna and possibly band range (2.4GHz). Although this works seamlessly on Windows, this is not the case on Linux.
A possible solution is to move your WiFi network to 5GHz so that there will be no interference. If your card/router does not support this, you can upgrade your WiFi drivers/firmware. This approach works on Realtek 8723BE and latest rtl drivers for this chip from AUR.
If nothing of the previous is possible, a less effective mitigation is to tweak the fragment size and the latency on PulseAudio output port, trying to compensate interference. Reasonable values must be chosen, because these settings can make the audio out of sync (e.g. when playing videos). To change the latency of the bluetooth headset's port (e.g. to 125000 microseconds in the following example):
$ pactl set-port-latency-offset <bluez_card> headset-output 125000
where the identifier of the card can be found with
$ pacmd list-sinks | egrep -o 'bluez_card[^>]*'
The fragment size can be set in the config file /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
and takes effect after a restart of PulseAudio (for more details please see PulseAudio/Troubleshooting#Setting the default fragment number and buffer size in PulseAudio).
Perhaps it will help to add "options ath9k btcoex_enable = 1" to the /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf
(with the appropriate bluetooth adapter):
/etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf
# possibly fix for sound glitches options ath9k btcoex_enable = 1
Then restart.
Connecting works, but I cannot play sound
Make sure that you see the following messages in your system log:
bluetoothd[5556]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.83 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSource bluetoothd[5556]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.83 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSink
If you see a message similar to this, you can go on and investigate your PulseAudio configuration. Otherwise, go back and ensure the connection is successful.
When using GDM, another instance of PulseAudio is started, which "captures" your bluetooth device connection. This can be prevented by masking the pulseaudio socket for the GDM user by doing the following:
# mkdir -p /var/lib/gdm/.config/systemd/user # ln -s /dev/null /var/lib/gdm/.config/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket
On next reboot the second instance of PulseAudio will not be started.
It may happen that bluez wrongly considers an headset as not a2dp capable. In this case, search the index of the bluetooth device with
$ pacmd ls
Among the output there should be a section related to the bluetooth headset, containing something similar to
pacmd ls
index: 2 name: <bluez_card.XX_XX_XX_XX_XX_XX> driver: <module-bluez5-device.c> owner module: 27 properties: device.description = "SONY MDR-100ABN" device.string = "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX" device.api = "bluez" device.class = "sound" ...
To manually set the profile, run
$ pacmd set-card-profile 2 a2dp_sink
where 2 is the index of the device retrieved through pacmd ls
.
Connecting works, sound plays fine until headphones become idle, then stutters
If the headphones play sound correctly until they become idle and then stutter on resume (e.g. because the sound is paused, or because no sound is played for a while), try disabling PulseAudio's automatic sink/source suspension on idle.
See PulseAudio/Troubleshooting#Bluetooth headset replay problems for steps.
UUIDs has unsupported type
During pairing you might see this output in bluetoothctl:
[CHG] Device 00:1D:43:6D:03:26 UUIDs has unsupported type
This message is a very common one and can be ignored.
PC shows device as paired, but is not recognized by device
This might be due to the device not supporting bluetooth LE for pairing.
Try setting ControllerMode = bredr
in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
. See [2].
Device connects, then disconnects after a few moments
If you see messages like the following in journalctl
output, and your device fails to connect or disconnects shortly after connecting:
bluetoothd: Unable to get connect data for Headset Voice gateway: getpeername: Transport endpoint is not connected (107) bluetoothd: connect error: Connection refused (111)
This may be because you have already paired the device with another operating system using the same bluetooth adapter (e.g., dual-booting). Some devices cannot handle multiple pairings associated with the same MAC address (i.e., bluetooth adapter). You can fix this by re-pairing the device. Start by removing the device:
$ bluetoothctl [bluetooth]# devices Device XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX My Device [bluetooth]# remove XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Then restart bluetooth.service
, turn on your bluetooth adapter, make your device discoverable, re-scan for devices, and re-pair your device. Depending on your bluetooth manager, you may need to perform a full reboot in order to re-discover the device.
Apple Airpods have low volume
Edit bluetooth.service
by running systemctl edit --full bluetooth.service
and change the line:
ExecStart=/usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd
to:
ExecStart=/usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd --noplugin=avrcp
Finally restart bluetooth.service
, reload systemd manager configuration
Reconnect your headset.
HSP problem: the bluetooth sink and source are created, but no audio is being transmitted
You may be missing firmware or the SCO (audio protocol of HSP and HFP) routing might be wrong. See [3] - the firmware for BCM20702 can be installed via bcm20702a1-firmwareAUR or bcm20702b0-firmwareAUR.
Headset via Bluez5/bluez-alsa
First, ensure that your headset is correctly paired and connected to the system (see for example bluetoothctl
).
Then, install bluez-alsa-gitAUR, start (and enable) the bluealsa
service, and add your user to the audio
group.
Run the following command to check if everything is working as intended (replace XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
and FILE
below):
$ aplay -D bluealsa:SRV=org.bluealsa,DEV=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX,PROFILE=a2dp FILE.wav
Finally, add the following lines to your ~/.asoundrc
:
~/.asoundrc
defaults.bluealsa { service "org.bluealsa" device "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX" profile "a2dp" }
You can now use the bluealsa device to reach your headset. Volume management is conducted normally via alsamixer
with the option -D bluealsa
.
Legacy documentation: ALSA, bluez5 and PulseAudio method
ALSA, bluez5, and PulseAudio work together to allow a wireless Bluetooth headset to play audio. The following method works with a Lenovo T61p laptop and SoundBot SB220 wireless bluetooth headset. The required software stack is extensive and failure to include all components can produce errors which are difficult to understand. The following list of software packages might not be the minimum required set and needs to be examined more closely.
Bluez5 has a regression causing HSP/HFP Telephone profile to not be available. This regression is documented in the draft release notes for Pulseaudio 5.0 which say (in "Notes for packagers"): "PulseAudio now supports BlueZ 5, but only the A2DP profile. BlueZ 4 is still the only way to make HSP/HFP work." (from here)
Install Software Packages
The core software components are ALSA, Bluez5, PulseAudio. However there are additional libraries which are required. As well as a player which can play audio files. The following section lists the software packages installed in order to connect the headset and play audio over the headset.
Install ALSA and associated libraries
ALSA works with the linux kernel to provide audio services to user mode software. The following packages are used with the Bluetooth headset: alsa-utils, alsa-plugins, alsa-tools.
Install Bluez5
Bluez5 is the latest Bluetooth stack. It is required for PulseAudio to interface with wireless headsets. Required packages: bluez, bluez-utils, bluez-libs.
Install Audacious
Audacious is a program which plays audio files. It can work directly with ALSA or with PulseAudio. Required packages: audacious, audacious-plugins.
Procedure
Once the required packages are installed, use this procedure to play audio with a bluetooth headset. The high level overview of the procedure is to pair the headset, connect the headset, configure the player and pulse audio controller and then play audio.
Start the bluetooth service as root.
Verify Bluetooth is started
# systemctl status bluetooth bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; disabled) Active: active (running) since Sat 2013-12-07 12:31:14 PST; 12s ago Docs: man:bluetoothd(8) Main PID: 3136 (bluetoothd) Status: "Running" CGroup: /system.slice/bluetooth.service └─3136 /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd Dec 07 12:31:14 t61p systemd[1]: Starting Bluetooth service... Dec 07 12:31:14 t61p bluetoothd[3136]: Bluetooth daemon 5.11 Dec 07 12:31:14 t61p systemd[1]: Started Bluetooth service. Dec 07 12:31:14 t61p bluetoothd[3136]: Starting SDP server Dec 07 12:31:14 t61p bluetoothd[3136]: Bluetooth management interface 1.3 i...ed Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.
Start the PulseAudio daemon. This must be done after X windows is started and as a normal user.
$ pulseaudio -D
Verify the PulseAudio daemon is running.
$ pulseaudio --check -v I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon running as PID 3186
Start up bluetoothctl as root and pair and connect your headset. As a regular user, bluetoothctl will pair but not connect. Perhaps this is related to the config file (shown below) which is setup for what appears to be the root user. Note: the procedure shown below is for an initial pair and connect of the headphone. If the headset is already paired, then the procedure below can be shortened to: power on, agent on, default-agent, connect <mac address>. The mac address can be seen from the devices command output.
$ bluetoothctl [NEW] Controller 00:1E:4C:F4:98:5B t61p-0 [default] [NEW] Device 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 SoundBot SB220 [bluetooth]# show Controller 00:1E:4C:F4:98:5B Name: t61p Alias: t61p-0 Class: 0x000000 Powered: no Discoverable: no Pairable: yes UUID: PnP Information (00001200-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: Generic Access Profile (00001800-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: Generic Attribute Profile (00001801-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: A/V Remote Control (0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: A/V Remote Control Target (0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: Audio Source (0000110a-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: Audio Sink (0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) Modalias: usb:v1D6Bp0246d050B Discovering: no [bluetooth]# power on [CHG] Controller 00:1E:4C:F4:98:5B Class: 0x0c010c Changing power on succeeded [CHG] Controller 00:1E:4C:F4:98:5B Powered: yes [bluetooth]# agent on Agent registered [bluetooth]# default-agent Default agent request successful
<power on your headset in pairing mode. Eventually you will see what appears to be a mac address.>
[bluetooth]# scan on Discovery started [CHG] Controller 00:1E:4C:F4:98:5B Discovering: yes [CHG] Device 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 RSSI: -61 [bluetooth]# pair 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 Attempting to pair with 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 [CHG] Device 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 Connected: yes [CHG] Device 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 UUIDs has unsupported type [CHG] Device 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 Paired: yes Pairing successful [bluetooth]# connect 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 [CHG] Device 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 Connected: yes Connection successful [bluetooth]# info 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 Device 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 Name: SoundBot SB220 Alias: SoundBot SB220 Class: 0x240404 Icon: audio-card Paired: yes Trusted: no Blocked: no Connected: yes LegacyPairing: yes UUID: Headset (00001108-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: Audio Sink (0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: A/V Remote Control Target (0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: A/V Remote Control (0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: Handsfree (0000111e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
Start up alsamixer, for simplicity un-mute all your outputs. Oddly enough some can be muted though. The ones I had muted during playback were:
- Headphones
- SPIDF
Start up audacious. Use the menu to select PulseAudio as your output. Somewhere I read that bluez5 requires pulseaudio-git and this jives with my experience.
Start up pavucontrol in a terminal. In the Outputs tab select the bluetooth headset.
screenshot of application settings
Miscellaneous configuration files
For reference, these settings were also done.
ALSA /etc/asound.conf
The settings shown at the top of this page was used, but the additional modification for Intel laptop sound cards.
pcm.btheadset { type plug slave { pcm { type bluetooth device 00:1A:7D:12:36:B9 profile "auto" } } hint { show on description "BT Headset" } } ctl.btheadset { type bluetooth } options snd-hda-intel model=laptop
/etc/dbus-1/system.d/bluetooth.conf
The settings here seem to be enabled for root only. See the policy user="root" section. However, if a regular user is specified here, the system fails to start. Someone with more knowledge could explain why.
/etc/dbus-1/system.d/bluetooth.conf
<!-- This configuration file specifies the required security policies for Bluetooth core daemon to work. --> <!DOCTYPE busconfig PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD D-BUS Bus Configuration 1.0//EN" "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/dbus/1.0/busconfig.dtd"> <busconfig> <!-- ../system.conf have denied everything, so we just punch some holes --> <policy user="root"> <allow own="org.bluez"/> <allow send_destination="org.bluez"/> <allow send_interface="org.bluez.Agent1"/> <allow send_interface="org.bluez.MediaEndpoint1"/> <allow send_interface="org.bluez.MediaPlayer1"/> <allow send_interface="org.bluez.ThermometerWatcher1"/> <allow send_interface="org.bluez.AlertAgent1"/> <allow send_interface="org.bluez.Profile1"/> <allow send_interface="org.bluez.HeartRateWatcher1"/> <allow send_interface="org.bluez.CyclingSpeedWatcher1"/> </policy> <policy at_console="true"> <allow send_destination="org.bluez"/> </policy> <!-- allow users of lp group (printing subsystem) to communicate with bluetoothd --> <policy group="lp"> <allow send_destination="org.bluez"/> </policy> <policy context="default"> <deny send_destination="org.bluez"/> </policy> </busconfig>
Tested applications
As noted above this will work easily with audacious. YouTube videos with Chromium and Flash Player will work on some videos. If the video has ads it will not work, but if the video does not have ads it will work. Just make sure that after audacious is working with Bluetooth headset, start Chromium, and navigate to YouTube. Find a video without leading ads, and it should play the audio. If the settings icon has the a menu with two drop-down combo boxes for Speed and Quality it will play.
Switch between HSP/HFP and A2DP setting
This can easily be achieved by the following command where the card_number
can be obtained by running pacmd list-cards
.
$ pacmd set-card-profile card_number a2dp_sink
For enabling automatic profile switching from A2DP to HSP when a recording stream appears without any role set, you can append auto_switch=2
to load-module module-bluetooth-policy
in /etc/pulse/default.pa
.
For more information about PulseAudio profiles, see PulseAudio Documentation.
A2DP not working with PulseAudio
Socket interface problem
If PulseAudio fails when changing the profile to A2DP with bluez 4.1+ and PulseAudio 3.0+, you can try disabling the Socket interface from /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf
by removing the line Enable=Socket
and adding line Disable=Socket
.
When the A2DP sink profile is unavailable it will not be possible to switch to the A2DP sink (output) with a PulseAudio front-end and the A2DP sink will not even be listed. This can be confirmed with pactl
.
$ pactl list | grep -C2 A2DP Profiles: headset_head_unit: Headset Head Unit (HSP/HFP) (sinks: 1, sources: 1, priority: 30, available: yes) a2dp_sink: High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink) (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 40, available: no) off: Off (sinks: 0, sources: 0, priority: 0, available: yes) Active Profile: headset_head_unit
Trying to manually set the card profile with pacmd
will fail.
$ pacmd set-card-profile bluez_card.C4_45_67_09_12_00 a2dp_sink Failed to set card profile to 'a2dp_sink'.
This is known to happen from version 10.0 of Pulseaudio when connecting to Bluetooth headphones via Bluedevil or another BlueZ front-end. See related bug report.
This issue also appears after initial pairing of Headphones with some Bluetooth controllers (e.g. 0a12:0001, Cambridge Silicon Radio
) which might default to the Handsfree
or Headset - HS
service and will not allow switching to the A2DP PulseAudio sink that requires the AudioSink
service.
Possible solutions:
- For some headsets, using the headset's volume or play/pause controls while connected can trigger the A2DP profile to become available.
- It is possible that connecting to a headset via
bluetoothctl
from bluez-utils will make the A2DP sink profile available. There is an automation for this every time a bluetooth device is connected: fix-bt-a2dpAUR (detailed usage)
[bluetooth]# connect [headset MAC here]
- Manually switching to Bluetooth's
AudioSink
service which would make the A2DP profile and its A2DP PulseAudio sink available. This can be done with blueman-manager which included in blueman or by registering the UUID of the AudioSink service withbluetoothctl
.
$ bluetoothctl [bluetooth]# menu gatt [bluetooth]# register-service 0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb [bluetooth]# quit
Gnome with GDM
The instructions below were tested on Gnome 3.24.2 and PulseAudio 10.0 however they may still be applicable and useful for other versions.
If PulseAudio fails when changing the profile to A2DP while using GNOME with GDM, you need to prevent GDM from starting its own instance of PulseAudio:
- Prevent Pulseaudio clients from automatically starting a server if one is not running by adding the following:
/var/lib/gdm/.config/pulse/client.conf
autospawn = no daemon-binary = /bin/true
- Prevent systemd from starting Pulseaudio anyway with socket activation:
$ sudo -ugdm mkdir -p /var/lib/gdm/.config/systemd/user $ sudo -ugdm ln -s /dev/null /var/lib/gdm/.config/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket
- Restart, and check that there is no PulseAudio process for the
gdm
user using:
$ pgrep -u gdm pulseaudio
Further discussion about this problem and alternative fixes can be found here and here. Alternatively, one may try and install pulseaudio-bluetooth-a2dp-gdm-fixAUR.
HFP not working with PulseAudio
HFP-only bluetooth headsets may not be usable in the standard configuration of pulseaudio. The respective profiles occur, but they are not available:
-
bluetoothctl
output shows:
UUID: Audio Sink (0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: A/V Remote Control Target (0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: A/V Remote Control (0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb) UUID: Handsfree (0000111e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
-
pactl list
of respective device shows:
... Profiles: ... headset_head_unit: Headset Head Unit (HSP/HFP) (sinks: 1, sources: 1, priority: 30, available: no)
To solve the respective issue, update to pulseaudio (>=13) and potentially pulseaudio-modules-bt-gitAUR and bluez (>=5.5) to latest versions. Then install ofonoAUR (start and enable using systemctl) and phonesimAUR and create / activate a fake modem as described here [4]:
- Create
/etc/ofono/phonesim.conf
with:
[phonesim] Address=127.0.0.1 Driver=phonesim Port=12345
- Start as user:
phonesim -p 12345 /usr/share/phonesim/default.xml &
- Power modem:
dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.ofono /phonesim org.ofono.Modem.SetProperty string:"Powered" variant:boolean:true
- Activate modem:
dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.ofono /phonesim org.ofono.Modem.SetProperty string:"Online" variant:boolean:true
- If you want to check the results of this, download ofono git sources ([5]) and call
list-modems
from theofono/test
directory. The output of the respective modem section should read like this:
... [ /phonesim ] Online = 1 Powered = 1 Lockdown = 0 Emergency = 0 Manufacturer = MeeGo ...
- Finally, restart pulseaudio and reconnect headset. Now, HFP should be available:
headset_head_unit: Headset Head Unit (HSP/HFP) (sinks: 1, sources: 1, priority: 30, available: yes)
See also
Using the same device on Windows and Linux without pairing the device over and over again