A Bluetooth Manager for Xfce other than Blueman?

WetGeek

I swear I asked this question before today, but I vaguely remember losing it when I needed to continue the post from my Xfce laptop. I needed to include some screen captures from there. Since it's now about 45 minutes until my bedtime, and I've now been up nearly 24 hours, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail this time, but I'll be glad to answer any questions tomorrow.

Briefly, then, I'm still trying to figure out how to get my Xfce laptop to work with a Bluetooth keyboard. In fact, with any Bluetooth keyboard - I've tried three of them. They appear to pair and connect, but I can't type a single character. I know Solus uses Blueman as the Bluetooth manager for Xfce, and my question is: "Is there any other BT manager that I could try, to see whether it will work"?

I've searched though eopkg, and although there were a lot of results, I couldn't find anything there that I thought might help. So I joined the Xfce forum, and found a post about a bluetoothctrl utility, which seems to be a relative of blueman. The article explains how enable autoconnect for a keyboard, and I thought there's a chance that it might work. It's a brief article, so I'll copy it here, then I'm off to bed. Is anyone here familiar with the utilities and service that are mentioned here? If so, is there a chance it might work with Solus Xfce?

Here we go:
Automatically enabling a Bluetooth Keyboard

Remember that you have to pair and trust your device in bluetoothctl to cause autoconnect. Then you can power up your adapter automatically in several ways:

Custom systemd service file:

Create a config file /etc/btkbd.conf

Config file for btkbd.service

change when required (e.g. keyboard hardware changes, more hci devices are connected)

BTKBDMAC = ''mac_address_of_your_device''
HCIDEVICE = ''hci_device_identifier''
mac_address_of_your_device can be found with the scan on command of the bluetoothctl utility.

hci_device_identifier can be found with:

hcitool dev

Devices:
hci0 06:05:04:03:02:01
We are looking for the identifier hci0 in this case. The MAC address shown here is the address of the controller, not the address of the keyboard itself.

Next, create a new service file at /etc/systemd/system/btkbd.service.

[Unit]
Description=systemd Unit to automatically start a Bluetooth keyboard
Documentation=https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bluetooth_Keyboard
ConditionPathExists=/etc/btkbd.conf
ConditionPathExists=/usr/local/bin/hcitool
ConditionPathExists=/usr/local/sbin/hciconfig

[Service]
Type=oneshot
EnvironmentFile=/etc/btkbd.conf
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/hciconfig ${HCIDEVICE} up

ignore errors on connect, spurious problems with bt? so start next command with -

ExecStart=-/usr/local/bin/hcitool cc ${BTKBDMAC}

[Install]
WantedBy=bluetooth.target
And then enable this service with systemd's tools.

Or udev rule:

Create new file /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

Set bluetooth power up

ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="hci0", RUN+="/usr/bin/hciconfig hci0 up"

(The Xfce forum uses software that's nothing at all like Flarum. Sorry for the poor translation. I tried to paste that as plain text, but apparently some of it was meaningful as formatting to our forum software.)

EbonJaeger

The only other standalone one I know of is the one I'm creating, which isn't ready for release yet, though most features should be working.

I think anything would just be a front-end for the same BlueZ stack anyways, so I'm not sure anything would be different.

WetGeek

EbonJaeger I think anything would just be a front-end for the same BlueZ stack anyways, so I'm not sure anything would be different.

I take that to mean that the bluetoothctrl utility mentioned in the Xfce forum is something like that, so it probably won't do a lot of good to keep searching through that forum for an answer. I guess I just need to find what it is that I'm missing in all of this. So far as I know, it should be enough to pair the keyboard and connect it, then trust it. I've done all of that with no success.

I still can't understand how @TraceyC can be testing with the same OS, the same DE, and the same Bluetooth keyboard that I'm using, and getting different results than I'm getting. Just not holding my mouth right, I guess.

Axios

Been watching your threads
I know this been ongoing problem for you
You got get back to basics Do a bare metal install (nothing added basic stuff) and make sure keyboard
Hibernate work. (If it does not work that way you need figure out why before everything gets complicated)
If it does work continue to set up one thing at a time until it breaks.

I dont know any other way do without chasing your tail as you found out.
If that stuff does not work on basics it needs addressed early on.

Just kinda way I see it
(Keep good notes)

WetGeek

Axios You got get back to basics

Thanks for your suggestion. As it happens, reinstalling the system on my laptop and configuring it is a HUGE endeavor, and I've done that recently. But I think I have a substitute.

If I shut down Vivaldi and hibernate, everything works fine - including restoring my WiFi connection when everything else is restored. And since Vivaldi restarts where it left off, I can just launch it again after I've restored from hibernation.

But I can't explain why that should matter. Vivaldi might be pretty big, but it still can't exceed the size of my RAM. And my swap partition is twice the size of my RAM (32 GB vs. 16 GB). Everything that's in RAM when I hibernate should easily fit into the swap partition, with lots of space left over.

What am I missing in all this? (Please don't suggest that I change to another browser - I don't know of another one that supports the features I use all day, every day.)

WetGeek

Axios Just kinda way I see it

I just had an aha moment. Since browsing data constantly increased, if that were the problem, it would explain why hibernating works for a while, then starts to fsck up. So, I deleted all of Vivaldi's browsing data, and then hibernated. Everything worked perfectly. I think the next thing I need to do is look through the Vivaldi settings very carefully, and try to find a way to limit the size of the browsing data. Maybe that will end my pain!

Axios

WetGeek I ran all the aspects of hibernation through my mind before I posted earlier
even all that you talk about and could not see it causing issues.

But since Vivaldi uses internet must be some issues their when its coming back to life.
From what you say one would think its not hibernating everything.
(You can always increase the swap) and maybe run a memory test.
Interesting.
Note: what is and what should be maybe doesnt hold true
I think maybe the way a browser handles its cache might
be like you said making things huge but if browser cached something to file dunno why it would hibernate that.
Just thinking

WetGeek

WetGeek limit the size of the browsing data

Yes! I've never messed with this before, but it defaulted to something like 3 months. Since I use the browser all day every day, that amounts to a lot of browsing data. This is what I changed it to:

That should be enough to be useful, but it should never keep me from hibernating successfully. I think I finally got to the bottom of this!

WetGeek

Axios I think maybe the way a browser handles its cache might

That's what I'm thinking now. If Vivaldi is trying to hibernate MORE than what it has in RAM, that could be the culprit. Clearly, with a swap partition twice the size of RAM, something extra is being fetched and saved to the swap partition.

TraceyC

Please keep the different topics in their different threads. Mixing them up makes it much more difficult to follow what's happening and for people to help. Thanks.