Bluetooth randomly stops working

Support
1

I installed the latest version of Manjaro on my Acer Aspire 5740G laptop. The OS is working great on it! I have just one little annoyance which seems to persist: Bluetooth. I need it for the BT mouse I use… this causes my mouse to not work on login or stop working after some minutes / hours.

Sometimes bluetooth doesn’t get enabled when I log in, or becomes disabled after a certain amount of time. When this happens the button to enable Bluetooth in the KDE System Settings - Hardware - Bluetooth menu is available but clicking it does nothing, I need to reboot and hope it works next time. The bluetooth button on the laptop has a blue light to indicate it’s on but pressing it has no effect.

2

Do you by any chance have an Intel AX200 or AX201?

1 Like
3

How do I check, what do I check for? If you mean CPU that’s an Intel Core i5.

4

Please provide inxi -Fza

You check for if your network/bluetooth card is Intel AX200 or AX201

5 
[mircea@mircea-aspire5740 ~]$ inxi -Fza
System:    Kernel: 5.13.5-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.13-x86_64 
           root=UUID=9e216875-7e86-4961-a21d-55584ef987f9 rw quiet apparmor=1 
           security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3 
           Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.22.4 tk: Qt 5.15.2 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 1 dm: SDDM 
           Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire 5740 v: V1.28 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Acer model: Aspire 5740 v: V1.28 serial: <filter> BIOS: Phoenix v: 1.28 
           date: 08/12/2010 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 46.0 Wh (100.0%) condition: 46.0/48.8 Wh (94.1%) 
           volts: 12.3 min: 11.1 model: SONYCorp AS07A41 type: Li-ion serial: <filter> 
           status: Full 
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3 M 330 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Nehalem 
           family: 6 model-id: 25 (37) stepping: 2 microcode: 11 cache: L2: 3 MiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 17034 
           Speed: 1382 MHz min/max: 933/2133 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1382 2: 1788 
           3: 1515 4: 1533 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
           Type: l1tf 
           mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
           Type: mds 
           status: Vulnerable: Clear CPU buffers attempted, no microcode; SMT vulnerable 
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 
           mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, 
           IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Park [Mobility Radeon HD 5430/5450/5470] 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: radeon v: kernel bus-ID: 02:00.0 
           chip-ID: 1002:68e0 class-ID: 0300 
           Device-2: Chicony Acer CrystalEye Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
           bus-ID: 2-1.5:3 chip-ID: 04f2:b044 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter> 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: 
           loaded: ati,radeon unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :0 
           screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.2x8.0") 
           s-diag: 414mm (16.3") 
           Monitor-1: LVDS res: 1366x768 hz: 60 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD CEDAR (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.13.5-1-MANJARO LLVM 12.0.1) 
           v: 3.3 Mesa 21.1.5 compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 5 Series/3400 Series High Definition Audio 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 
           chip-ID: 8086:3b56 class-ID: 0403 
           Device-2: AMD Cedar HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5400/6300/7300 Series] 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 02:00.1 
           chip-ID: 1002:aa68 class-ID: 0403 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.13.5-1-MANJARO running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no 
           Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
           Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.32 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Broadcom NetLink BCM57780 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI Aspire 7740G driver: tg3 v: kernel port: 2000 
           bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 14e4:1692 class-ID: 0200 
           IF: enp3s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR928X Wireless Network Adapter 
           vendor: Quanta Microsystems EM306 802.11bgn driver: ath9k v: kernel port: 2000 
           bus-ID: 05:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:002a class-ID: 0280 
           IF: wlp5s0 state: up mac: <filter> 
Bluetooth: Device-1: Foxconn / Hon Hai Acer Bluetooth module type: USB driver: btusb 
           v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-1.4:3 chip-ID: 0489:e011 class-ID: fe01 serial: <filter> 
           Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 2 state: up address: see --recommends 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 298.09 GiB used: 77.67 GiB (26.1%) 
           SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
           ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Hitachi model: HTS545032B9A300 
           size: 298.09 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s 
           type: HDD rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> rev: C60F scheme: GPT 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 294.09 GiB size: 288.41 GiB (98.07%) used: 77.67 GiB (26.9%) 
           fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 4 GiB used: 1.8 MiB (0.0%) priority: -2 
           dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 56.0 C mobo: 42.0 C gpu: radeon temp: 58.0 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:      Processes: 185 Uptime: 2h 1m wakeups: 1 Memory: 3.7 GiB used: 1.18 GiB (31.8%) 
           Init: systemd v: 248 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 11.1.0 clang: 12.0.1 
           Packages: pacman: 1562 lib: 398 flatpak: 0 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.8 
           running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.06
6

Nope, it is a different bluetooth device. Hopefully someone else can help you. Or you can look that up to see if anyone else had the same issue.

7

With some research I finally found a command to fix Bluetooth at runtime after it breaks, saving me from having to restart the laptop every 15 minutes:

sudo rfkill block bluetooth;sudo rfkill unblock bluetooth;sudo systemctl restart bluetooth.service

First two commands seem to be required, the third is added for completion’s sake. Using systemctl alone to restart the BT service won’t affect the issue, only rfkill seems to.