Thinkpad 410s -- Cannot re-enable Bluetooth after it's been disabled

[Tony Espy]

During UDS-P I was experimenting with various settings to reduce power consumption on my Lenonvo Thinkpad 410s.

I turned Bluetooth off via the System Settings - Bluetooth panel. I also removed the icon from the panel by turning visibility to Off. This all works great except for the simple fact that I cannot re-enable my Bluetooth anymore.

When I re-launch System Settings - Bluetooth, both toggle switches are "Off", and the left hand column below includes the text "No Bluetooth Adapters found". There seems to be no way to re-enable my Bluetooth now as both switches are disabled and grayed out.

I believe this is due to the fact that when BT is disabled, the device disappears from the bus, which leaves nothing for the code to grab in order to re-enable the device. This is a guess on my part, as I haven't yet taken a look at the code...

My machine is running 11.10 with all of the latest updates.

The version of gnome-control-center on my machine is:

gnome-control-center:
  Installed: 1:3.2.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1:3.2.2-0ubuntu1
---
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.2.2-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-14.23-generic-pae 3.0.9
Tags: oneiric running-unity
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-14-generic-pae i686
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-29 (71 days ago)
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare
usr_lib_gnome-control-center:
 deja-dup 20.1-0ubuntu0.2
 gnome-bluetooth 3.2.0-0ubuntu2
 indicator-datetime 0.3.1-0ubuntu1

[Tony Espy (awe)]

apport information

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

reassigning to gnome-bluetooth, the current g-c-c capplet is built from there as is the indicator

[Tony Espy (awe)]

Looks like my apport-collect didn't really grab too much more information...

Here's the output from 'rfkill list':

espy@zappa:% sudo rfkill list
[sudo] password for espy:
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: no

No BT rfkill device is listed...

[Tony Espy (awe)]

So I may have a bit of mud on my face...

There may not be an actual BT adapter in this machine, however to save some face, the BT icon was shown on the panel and I did run the settings app to disable/remove it from the panel. I'm pretty I toggled both switches at the time.

I've checked 'lsusb', and /proc/acpi/ibm for presence of the bluetooth adapter, but still don't see it. So, this may be an issue that the system falsely advertises BT, allows you to remove it from the panel, and then rightfully doesn't allow you to re-enable.

For now, this should be considered low-priority, but I will continue to follow-up on this...

[Rick Spencer (rick-rickspencer3)]

setting to low as per comment #4

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Did you first turn it off using the indicator or the control center controls? There is a bug in the indicator for sure, it's stating that bluetooth is active on boxes which have no bluetooth (confirmed on a dell 10v)

[Tony Espy (awe)]

I'm pretty sure it was from the indicator... but again this was six months back.

If I get a chance later today, I can check with a LiveCD.

[Sami Sieranoja (sjs-a)]

According to the specs, Thinkpad 410s does have a bluetooth device:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5827&review=lenovo+thinkpad+t410s

[newbe (newbe)]

I also have the same Probleme on Ubuntu 12.04 x64 on Lenovo IdeaPad Z 560

hciconfig --all
hci0: Type: BR/EDR Bus: USB
 BD Address: F0:7B:CB:C6:8A:3E ACL MTU: 1021:8 SCO MTU: 64:1
 UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN
 RX bytes:3253 acl:42 sco:0 events:108 errors:0
 TX bytes:11724 acl:53 sco:0 commands:53 errors:0
 Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0x9b 0xff 0x79 0x87
 Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3
 Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK
 Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT
 Name: 'mint-0'
 Class: 0x6e0100
 Service Classes: Networking, Rendering, Capturing, Audio, Telephony
 Device Class: Computer, Uncategorized
 HCI Version: 3.0 (0x5) Revision: 0x1d8
 LMP Version: 3.0 (0x5) Subversion: 0x4203
 Manufacturer: Broadcom Corporation (15)

 gnome-bluetooth 3.2.2-0ubuntu5
 indicator-datetime 0.3.94-0ubuntu2

[Tony Espy (awe)]

Based upon my comment #4 which states that 'lsusb' doesn't show a Bluetooth adapter, and the fact that after I recently got my system board replaced and it now does show a Bluetooth adapter, I'm going to mark this bug as invalid.