Ubuntu

Rfkill cannot soft unblock bluetooth

Asked by Vitor Braga

I'm running Ubuntu 21.10. My bluetooth is soft blocked and I'm unable to unblock it.

vitor@zeljava:~$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: no
1: hci0: Bluetooth
 Soft blocked: yes
 Hard blocked: no

Running "rfkill unblock bluetooth" does not change the output:

vitor@zeljava:~$ rfkill unblock bluetooth
vitor@zeljava:~$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: no
1: hci0: Bluetooth
 Soft blocked: yes
 Hard blocked: no

Other combinations such as "rfkill unblock all" or "rfkill unblock 1" also do not work. The GNOME GUI is also unable to turn it on.

I've tried a number of other combinations such as trying to use connman, disabling and enabling the Bluetooth adapter in the BIOS settings, _changing the physical Bluetooth adapter_, nothing seems to work and I'm out of ideas on how to debug this.

Additional debugging info: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1367017/rfkill-unable-to-remove-soft-block

I would appreciate some tips on how to further debug this, otherwise I'll have to try a reinstall.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Does the system have a make and model?

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Bernard Stafford (bernard010) said (last edit ): 		#2

I see you have Ubuntu 21.04 on a Dell Inspiron 5379 laptop.
Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter.
sudo rfkill unblock Bluetooth
sudo systemctl restart bluetooth
OR
rfkill unblock bluetooth
Then:
sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart
At the last resort: Reinstall Bluetooth

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Vitor Braga (vitorpybraga) said : 		#3

Yeah, unfortunately that (restarting the bluetooth service, running rfkill unblock) doesn't work. I tried reinstalling the bluez stack:

sudo apt purge bluez gnome-bluetooth indicator-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
and then
sudo apt install bluez gnome-bluetooth indicator-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

It still doesn't work.

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Vitor Braga (vitorpybraga) said : 		#4

By the way, I'm not sure this is an userspace issue as manipulating the sysfs softblock directly also fails:

vitor@zeljava:~$ cat /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/soft
1
vitor@zeljava:~$ sudo su -c "echo 0 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/soft"
vitor@zeljava:~$ cat /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/soft
1

It's definitely the right interface:

vitor@zeljava:~$ cat /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1/type
bluetooth

and https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/f40ddce8/Documentation/ABI/stable/sysfs-class-rfkill#L1 defines it as read-and-write.

I'm considering now rebooting into a USB image and checking if it works.

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Vitor Braga (vitorpybraga) said : 		#5

So, Bluetooth works fine when booting into an USB live image. So I guess I can cross off hardware issues.

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Hassan Williamson (hazrpg) said : 		#6

I get the same problem, works fine on a live USB image, but nothing I can do to turn bluetooth on - and I've been looking and trying everything for well over a year now.

I finally cracked and though I'd get a USB bluetooth device instead - but nope, same issue with that too. I get no issues on my desktop with a similar version of ubuntu and configuration.

I'm now at a loss as to what to do because I can't get the module in my laptop to work, and I can't get it to work via a USB dongle either on the same device.

For reference I've got the Dell Inspirion 7577, just updated my BIOS to the latest in case it was an issue there, and even checked flags in the BIOS itself to make sure everything is turned on. The odd thing is, WiFi works just fine so its not the module as far as I can tell - and like I said I ruled that out with a USB dongle too.

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