Whatever happened to Fedora Bluetooth?

[Timothy Murphy]

Phil Meyer wrote:

>> Has Fedora ceased to support Bluetooth?
>>
>> There does not seem to be any bluez-pin ,
>> so how is one meant to send the Bluetooth pin to another device?
>>
>> What happened to hcidump ?
>>
>> Kdebluetooth seems to have disappeared ...
>>

> Just a user here, and no expert.
> The new versions puts an icon on the Gnome task bar from which most
> simple user requirements are met.  Very slick!

Yes, I found the only way to set the Bluetooth PIN on my laptop
was to install bluez-gnome ,
which as you say installs an applet in the panel which does the trick.

However, I don't agree that this is very slick.
As a KDE user, I don't see what the bluetooth pin has to do with gnome.
Why can't I just write it in a file?
 
> Also, the basic config file structure is still intact for custom
> configurations, such as required for Dial Up Networking (DUN) over
> bluetooth.

I don't know what you mean by "still intact".
There used to be an entry for pin-helper in hcid.conf
which seems to have disappeared without as far as I can see 
without any comment.

> With DUN set up and bluetooth running, NetworkManager can connect me to
> my phone with a single click!
> 
> 1. added a passcode to /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf

How did you "add a passcode"?
What exactly does your addition say?

> 2. Modified /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf
> 
> #
> # RFCOMM configuration file.
> #
> 
> rfcomm0 {
> #       # Automatically bind the device at startup
>         bind yes;
> #
> #       # Bluetooth address of the device
>         device 00:07:E0:82:XX:XX;
> #
> #       # RFCOMM channel for the connection
>         channel 1;
> #
> #       # Description of the connection
>         comment "Treo 700p Phone";
> }
> 
> The reason you 'bind' to a specific device is for reliability in
> creating the connection.  This limits my DUN to a single device.  Other
> types of Bluetooth activity that do not use the rfcomm interface are not
> affected.
> 
> 3. use system-config-network to set up the dialup connection with
> /dev/rfcomm0 as the modem device.
> 
> All set!  Works like a champ, and NetworkManager will now offer this
> dial up connection as an option.

Sorry, but this sounds slightly crazy to me.
I thought the whole point of Bluetooth was that you could pair
with different devices.
It seems strange to me that you have to specify a particular device
in rfcomm.conf .

Anyway, how did you find this out?
Bluez documentation seems to be years out of date.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland