Bluetooth doesn't work on Dell 9343 (2015 XPS 13) in Ubuntu 16.04 yet worked in 14.04

[Andrew Sinclair]

I have the Dell 9343 developer edition with the Broadcom BCM 4352 wireless card. I am running BIOS version A07. In the pre-installed version of 14.04, I used an Apple bluetooth mouse and Apple bluetooth keyboard. I am now running 16.04 (clean install) and cannot get any bluetooth devices to work. I have tested with a Logitech bluetooth mouse and a no-name bluetooth keyboard.

When I scan for bluetooth devices, I can eventually "see" the Logitech mouse and Apple keyboard. It takes a long time for those to show up in my devices list though. The Apple mouse either never shows up, or shows up only with some numbers and no name.

I can attempt to pair the Logitech mouse and Apple keyboard. In both cases, I eventually get a "failed to pair" notice.

I have tried the following things, none of which fixed this issue:
 * Use the default bluetooth manager or Blueman
 * Toggle the radios off and on with the hardware switch (button next to F12)
 * Uninstall and re-install the Broadcom driver using the "additional drivers" menu from "Software and Updates"
 * Follow the firmware steps documented here: http://hgdev.co/install-ubuntu-15-10-on-the-dell-xps-13-9343-2015-a-complete-guide/

[Jesse Sung (wenchien)]

This may be caused by missing firmware. The BT firmware is not in Ubuntu archive and it's delivered with OEM image due to license issue. Please try `dmesg | grep Bluetooth` and see if there's any complain about unable to find firmware.

[Andrew Sinclair (andrew-sinclair)]

dmesg | grep Bluetooth
[ 6.973194] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.21
[ 6.973209] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[ 6.973213] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[ 6.973217] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[ 6.973222] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[ 6.987546] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: chip id 63
[ 7.003539] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM20702A
[ 7.004513] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM20702A1 (001.002.014) build 0000
[ 7.010068] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: Patch brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-216f.hcd not found
[ 7.981053] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[ 7.981054] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[ 7.981058] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[ 11.024469] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[ 11.024476] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[ 11.024482] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11

This line is interesting:
[ 7.010068] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: Patch brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-216f.hcd not found

I have BCM20702A0-0a5c-216f.hcd in /lib/firmware/brcm following the instructions from the link in my original report. I renamed it to BCM20702A1-0a5c-216f.hcd but got the same "not found" output.

[Andrew Sinclair (andrew-sinclair)]

But... despite that error, I can pair everything!

[Francois Trahan (francois-trahan)]

This fixed it for me (note the comment about the kernel number, as opposed to most answers out there)

http://askubuntu.com/questions/632336/bluetooth-broadcom-43142-isnt-working-on-ubuntu

[Jesse Sung (wenchien)]

@andrew-sinclair, it's weird to get "not found" even if the file is presented... Can you show me the output of `ls -al /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-216f.hcd`? Thanks.

[Andrew Sinclair (andrew-sinclair)]

My "not found" error seems to have stopped.

ls -al /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-216f.hcd

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 35080 Jun 1 11:15 /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-216f.hcd

[Jesse Sung (wenchien)]

@andrew-sinclair, does bluetooth work after the error stopped?

[Andrew Sinclair (andrew-sinclair)]

Yes - bluetooth is working now.