My bluetooth sometimes randomly disconnects all my devices, and whenever that happens or I purposeful disconnect any Bluetooth device the service itself gets stuck. I cant reconnect any devices, cant turn it off and and trying to /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart doesn't do anything. it just waits there for a very long and then says it failed. rebooting the computer also takes a while since its trying to force close the service and the timer counts up to about 3min before it finally restarts (or, how I usually do just hold down the power button and turn it back on)

Running Linux Mint 19.1

Hi 2Pacalypse,

Can you provide some hardware info : computer make and model and bluetooth adapter make and model ?

Also, did you notice if this started to happen after a particular update you made to your system (wondering if related to firmware version, or versions of the bluetooth software in Mint ...) ?

Thx.

Rick

Lenovo B5400, dunno the exact adapter whatever was build into the laptop.
I ran the regular updates, but haven't really been keeping track of what they contained. some of them include updated kernels. aside from that the only noteworthy change was moving from xfce to i3 but even going back to xfce disconnects me.

if it is blueman .. you're best to do a little investigating on your own first
https://github.com/blueman-project/b...roubleshooting

Hi 2Pacalypse,

Quick research seems to indicate that the laptop has a Realtek 8723BE (bgn) combo WiFi/Bluetooth adapter. Best to confirm by checking the output of the lspci command (sometimes lsusb) and looking for the line describing the bluetooth adapter.

A couple of troubleshooting ideas I came across, both from the Arch Linux Wiki (often an excellent resource for all things linux, by the way, not just Arch ...) :

General (regardless of adapter model)

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.

Specific to the Realtek 8723 BE :

rtl8723ae/rtl8723be

The rtl8723ae and rtl8723be modules are included in the mainline Linux kernel.

Some users may encounter errors with powersave on this card. This is shown with occasional disconnects that are not recognized by high level network managers (netctl, NetworkManager). This error can be confirmed by running dmesg -w or journalctl -f and looking for output related to powersave and the rtl8723ae/rtl8723be module. If you are having this issue, use the fwlps=0 kernel option, which should prevent the WiFi card from automatically sleeping and halting connection.

/etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723ae.conf
options rtl8723ae fwlps=0
or

/etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf
options rtl8723be fwlps=0
If you have poor signal, perhaps your device has only one physical antenna connected, and antenna autoselection is broken. You can force the choice of antenna with ant_sel=1 or ant_sel=2 kernel option.

Also : it seems that there are several distros that have deprecated various components of the blueZ-utils package (name may vary by distro). If nothing else has helped, you may want to ascertain whether this may be impacting your situation. Especially if you can determine that this package was recently updated and that your problems began around then. There seem to be various workarounds available, so even this cause shouldn't be a showstopper to getting your bluetooth working reliably again.

Also-Also .. ..

You don't mention the type of devices for which you use bluetooth. Know that, for audio devices, there is usually a pulseaudio dependency and that you should make sure your set-up in that area is appropriate and properly functioning.

Lastly, I have found bluetooth to be generally finicky under linux, especially when using GUI tools. I have found the tried and true command line tools for loading the module, starting the service, configuring the card, pairing and starting devices *WAY* more reliable.

Let us know if any of this helps.