Short and simple commandline Bluetooth in any new Linux distros

Yesterday I had to transfer some files/S60 Opensource programs to my Nokia 6630 mobile and so picked up my usb bluetooth dongle (after ages) and connected to my Linux PC to achieve the same. I had forgotten the things which I had done long time back to get it working (Also one of these days I have to find out where I had noted those steps down).

Either way I started by remembering that I have to try and use obex logic to put those files on the mobile (now come on remembering that isn’t that difficult;-). Soon I remembered most of the things to do through aptitude search/show bluetooth/bluetooth packages, dpkg -L <bluetooth related packages>, some trail_N_error and net searching (googling).

But to my horror what ever I do the connection wouldn’t establish has the bluetooth stack on the PC wasn’t pickup the PIN which I just configured on the PC. After some more rtfm and dpkg -L bluez-utils and cross verification on the bluez website I realised that the way the PIN to be used is specified to the bluetooth stack has changed on the PC and now instead of the pin_handler it uses a dbus based passkey handler. So I compiled the given passkey_agent.c and resolved it. And thus could achieve the file transfer without going into windows thou with some deficit of sleep 😉

So here are the commands one could use to work with bluetooth devices in a linux based pc =>

hciconfig
– Gives info about the bluetooth hci on your pc
– Ensure the device is up and running and has required scan modes
– hcitool dev should also give some of this info

hcitool inq and hcitool scan
– Gives info about or rather identifies nearby bluetooth devices

hcitool info <BTAddr>
– Get info about remote bluetooth device

l2ping <BTAddr>
– One way to see if we can communicate with a remote bluetooth device

sdptool browse <BTAddr> or sdptool records <BTAddr>
– Gives info about the services provided by a remote bluetooth device

obexftp –nopath –noconn –uuid none –bluetooth <BTAddr> –channel <OPUSHChann
elNo> –put <FileToPut>
– Allows one to send file without specifying the pin on the remote device side
– The OPush channel number for device is got from sdptool above

passkey-agent –default <Pin>
– Pin specified here is what the remote BT device should provide
or its user enter on that device when requested.

obexftp -b <BTAddr> -v -p <FileToPut>
– Allows one to put a file onto the specified BT device
– obexftp could also be used to get or list the files on the BT device
– also allows one to identify a nearby BT device by just giving -b option

obexpushd
– Allows one to recieve files sent from a bluetooth device.
– Depending on who started it, the recieved files will be stored in the corresponding home directory

Note: The old style pin_handler doesn’t work with latest bluez, you require a
dbus based passkey handler and there is one provided by default by bluez-utils
called passkey-agent
Hope this helps anyone who is trying to use bluetooth devices from the commandline on a new linux distro, as well as it would help me to remember for the future for my own use.