Today my bluetooth headset stopped working. I haven't modified anything recently (although a few days ago I was trying to get a bluetooth headset to automatically connect in a2dp mode, which involved installing blueman and re-pairing with it, but I've connected and rebooted several times since making that change and everything was working).

Now when I try to connect the headset I get:

Connection Failed: blueman.bluez.errors.DBusFailedError: Protocol Not available

Based on a few things from here (Bluetooth - Connection Failed: blueman.bluez.errors.DBusFailedError: Protocol Not available) and other Internet searches, I've tried:

$ sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
$ pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover

And I've tried reinstalling things:

$ sudo apt-get --purge --reinstall install bluetooth bluez blueman pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart [ ok ] Restarting networking (via systemctl): networking.service.
$ sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart [ ok ] Restarting bluetooth (via systemctl): bluetooth.service.

And of course rebooting, but nothing seems to help, and I can't figure out what protocol it's talking about, since I can see the headset and pair with it, but not make an audio connection.

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04.1. Some other details:

$ dpkg -l | grep blue blueman 2.0.5-1ubuntu1 bluetooth 5.48-0ubuntu3.1 bluez 5.48-0ubuntu3.1 bluez-cups 5.48-0ubuntu3.1 bluez-obexd 5.48-0ubuntu3.1 gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0:amd64 3.28.0-2ubuntu0.1 gnome-bluetooth 3.28.0-2ubuntu0.1 indicator-bluetooth 0.0.6+17.10.20170605-0ubuntu3 libbluetooth3:amd64 5.48-0ubuntu3.1 libgnome-bluetooth13:amd64 3.28.0-2ubuntu0.1 pulseaudio-module-bluetooth 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.1
$ sudo service bluetooth status
* bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; enabled; vendor preset Active: active (running) since Mon 2019-02-04 14:36:47 PST; 1min 13s ago Docs: man:bluetoothd(8) Main PID: 6912 (bluetoothd) Status: "Running" Tasks: 1 (limit: 4915) CGroup: / └─6912 /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd
Feb 04 14:36:47 AVB systemd[1]: Starting Bluetooth service... Feb 04 14:36:47 AVB bluetoothd[6912]: Bluetooth daemon 5.48 Feb 04 14:36:47 AVB systemd[1]: Started Bluetooth service. Feb 04 14:36:47 AVB bluetoothd[6912]: Starting SDP server Feb 04 14:36:47 AVB bluetoothd[6912]: Bluetooth management interface 1.14 initialized
$ dmesg | grep Bluetooth [ 5.197632] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22 [ 5.197654] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized [ 5.197657] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized [ 5.197660] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized [ 5.197664] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized [ 5.349217] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware revision 0.1 build 185 week 49 2017 [ 5.492623] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3 [ 5.492625] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast [ 5.492628] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized [ 16.972106] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 16.972113] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 16.972117] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 84.672241] Bluetooth: hci0: last event is not cmd complete (0x0f)
$ hciconfig hci0: Type: Primary Bus: USB BD Address: 74:70:FD:B6:73:0C ACL MTU: 1021:4 SCO MTU: 96:6 UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN INQUIRY RX bytes:18753 acl:61 sco:0 events:738 errors:0 TX bytes:14257 acl:60 sco:0 commands:267 errors:0
$ lspci -knn | grep Net -A3 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 [8086:24fd] (rev 78) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 [8086:0010] Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi Kernel modules: iwlwifi
$ lsusb Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp. Bus 001 Device 002: ID 13d3:5a07 IMC Networks Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
$ ps aux | grep blue me 2032 0.0 0.6 694048 54240 tty2 Sl+ 14:19 0:01 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/blueman-applet me 2091 0.0 0.0 82728 6832 ? Ss 14:19 0:00 /usr/lib/bluetooth/obexd root 6912 0.0 0.0 37992 6096 ? Ss 14:36 0:02 /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd

Any suggestions on where to look next? Thanks.

1

5 Answers

For me just reloading the module by executing:

pactl unload-module module-bluetooth-discover
pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover

helped solving the issue.

3

What did work for me was this: (as pointed above by Luca Mattia Ferrari)

$ sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio
$ rm ~/.config/pulse && sudo killall pulseaudio
$ sudo apt-get install pulseaudio
$ pulseaudio --start

The above to ensure pulse is working first.
Then, this one, which is a bit weird that doesn't come by default with pulseaudio itself:

$ sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
$ pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover 

A bit redundant I know, but these were the exact steps worked for me 10 minutes ago.
But OK, at least it works now :)

4

Just delete the device on bluetooth manager and pair again. Works for me.

Just restarting the pulseaudio worked for me.

None of the above solutions worked for me on Ubuntu Server 20.04. This is what finally did it:

# remove pulseaudio bluetooth module
sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
# install bluetooth plugins for PipeWire multimedia server
sudo apt-get install libspa-0.2-bluetooth
# stop or restart the service
systemctl --user stop pipewire-pulse.service pipewire.service 

After this, reconnecting the device works.

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