bluetoothctl No default controller available

Question

It's a bit wired here.

I have a problem is bluetoothctl always said "No default controller available". I found there are many people had same problem with me. But the situation is a bit different from them.

I can see my hciconfig -a have information like below
enter image description here

And hcitool dev seems no problem as well.
enter image description here

But I have no idea why my bluetoothctl always said "No default controller available"
enter image description here

Even when I turn down and turn up hci0 several times. It always in the same problem.

BTW, my BlueZ is 5.39. And I tried this experiment on buildroot. Kernel is 3.10

Try 'btmgmt power off' followed by 'btmgmt power on' and see what happens. Also, if you have btmon installed, try running that in the background using 'btmon &' and see what happens when you run the 'bluetoothctl' commands. — Youssif Saeed, Jan 31 '18 at 16:46
Did you check whether "bluetoothd" is running. Sometimes distribution socket activates the "bluetoothd" daemon, but sometimes not based on systemd service file. Check "ps -ef | grep bluetoothd", if not running, start it. bluetoothctl uses "DBUS API" internally to get these details from "bluetoothd" — Parthiban, Jul 06 '18 at 08:13
general "how do I get bluetooth to work in linux" question should be on [unix.se] — Evan Carroll, May 26 '20 at 18:42

score 57 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 02 '18 at 08:33

57

Had the same problem. Use: $ sudo bluetoothctl

Then the controller was found automatically. I also tried https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=207025 before. Maybe this effected the solution.

answered Jul 02 '18 at 08:33

A. Baur

602
5
7

for a solution using group privileges see one of the posts below (https://stackoverflow.com/a/53738121/9486871) – A. Baur Sep 22 '20 at 11:49
Not necessarily the best idea. One, because it is [*probably* not needed](https://stackoverflow.com/a/63880031/5395338), and two, there are [risks for superfluous use of `sudo`](https://askubuntu.com/questions/545768/whats-wrong-with-using-sudo). **Disclosure:** I up-voted this answer, then discovered the actual issue (group membership) was due to the fact that RPi OS Lite has an [**odd default**](https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/116843/83790) here. Lesson learned: most popular answer not always best answer. – Jun 22 '21 at 21:34

score 35 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 23 '20 at 23:59

35

Also happens if rfkill switch is blocking Bluetooth (for some inadvertent reason, in my case):

$ rfkill list all

0: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no

To unblock, pass the ID for your Bluetooth device from the list above to the unblock subcommand:

$ rfkill unblock 0

Then controller should be back:

$ bluetoothctl list
Controller .... [default]

answered Jun 23 '20 at 23:59

alexei

2,031
1
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do you know how to make this config persistent? – karakays Dec 13 '20 at 11:27
Don't know, not happening for me anymore. Maybe look into `rfkill-unblock@[index]` systemd service from `util-linux` package. But, I don't have it enabled fwiw. – alexei Dec 14 '20 at 15:04

score 15 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 12 '18 at 07:35

Here are the steps that worked for me by modifying the bluez config and the run without sudo:

Create a "bluetooth" group which will be granted with <allow send_destination="org.bluez"/> on bluez's d-bus config

$ sudo groupadd bluetooth

Open the config in /etc/dbus-1/system.d/bluetooth.conf with your favorite text editor

e.g.

$ sudo vi /etc/dbus-1/system.d/bluetooth.conf

Add/append the following lines below in /etc/dbus-1/system.d/bluetooth.conf

<policy group="bluetooth">
<allow send_destination="org.bluez"/>
</policy>
Save your changes.
Add your login user to "bluetooth" group

$ sudo usermod -a -G bluetooth <loginuser>

Reboot the system.
Then try to use "bluetoothctl" without sudo

$ bluetoothctl
[bluetooth]# show

Dare I ask what distro requires such thorough modification? IMO this should never be necessary. — bparker, Dec 05 '20 at 18:22

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 09 '20 at 00:49

7

Its an old thread, but might help someone looking for answers.

I have faced this problem most of the times, and the things I verify are:

systemctl status bluetooth == this checks if the bluetooth service daemon is already running or not. Check for output:
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) If not, start it using the command: sudo systemctl start bluetooth
using sudo bluetoothctl

one of these two was the culprit usually.

answered Jun 09 '20 at 00:49

lorenz

178
2
10

12

The status shows it's loaded and running but when I do `sudo bluetoothctl` it says "Agent registered" and opens a sub-program thingy (the next line starts with `[bluetooth]# ` and prompts me to type commands. When I type `scan on` to look for devices it says "No default controller available". – David G Jan 20 '22 at 18:15

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 11 '21 at 11:11

I had this problem with VanillaArch on Linux Kernel 5.12. After struggling for a day I found the problem is:

1. Some of bluetooth devices firmware are not available in the new linux libraries right out of the box and you need to find. for this problem you can refer to the following repo. In readme it's well documented what you should do. basically you 'd download and copy the frimware in

/lib/firmware/brcm

for Broadcom Bluetooth devices.
https://github.com/winterheart/broadcom-bt-firmware

2. Activation of two conflicting services on Bluetooth. Referring to "SayantanRC" on Arch froum :

When I compared between the two, I found these two services were enabled on my Manjaro installation, but disabled on my Arch linux installation:

blueman-mechanism.service
bluetooth-mesh.service

Disabled them and rebooted.

sudo systemctl disable blueman-mechanism.service
sudo systemctl disable bluetooth-mesh.service

Now the services are as below:

~ >>> systemctl list-unit-files | grep blue                                                                                                                                           
blueman-mechanism.service                  disabled        disabled     
bluetooth-mesh.service                     disabled        disabled     
bluetooth.service                          enabled         disabled     
dbus-org.bluez.service                     alias           -            
bluetooth.target                           static          -            
~ >>>

And voila, bluetooth is up!

~ >>> bluetoothctl                                                                                                                                                                    
Agent registered
[CHG] Controller 68:07:15:DE:1F:15 Pairable: yes
[bluetooth]# show
Controller 68:07:15:DE:1F:15 (public)
    Name: src-manjaro
    Alias: src-manjaro
    Class: 0x00000000
    Powered: no
    Discoverable: no
    DiscoverableTimeout: 0x000000b4
    Pairable: yes
    UUID: A/V Remote Control        (0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: Audio Source              (0000110a-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: PnP Information           (00001200-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: Audio Sink                (0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: Headset                   (00001108-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: A/V Remote Control Target (0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: Generic Access Profile    (00001800-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: Generic Attribute Profile (00001801-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: Device Information        (0000180a-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    UUID: Headset AG                (00001112-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    Modalias: usb:v1D6Bp0246d0537
    Discovering: no
    Roles: central
    Roles: peripheral
Advertising Features:
    ActiveInstances: 0x00 (0)
    SupportedInstances: 0x05 (5)
    SupportedIncludes: tx-power
    SupportedIncludes: appearance
    SupportedIncludes: local-name
[bluetooth]# quit

EDIT: For verification purpose, I re-enabled the services and bluetooth adapter was having trouble again. I disabled them and it is fine now. Checked on kernel 5.9 and 5.4.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=259260&p=2

Thank you! My bluetooth was fine for quite some time but today it suddenly stopped. Turns out I installed blueman at some point and removing it solved my problems! — T. Kallup, Nov 26 '21 at 16:43

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 14 '20 at 07:41

The answer above probably works on some distributions, but may get you into trouble in others. Unfortunately, it seems that every distribution has a different default configuration for Bluetooth - it's a pretty awful mess IMHO.

Here's what worked for me on a Debian derivative Raspberry Pi OS (née Raspbian):

As a preliminary check, on many distros you can check /etc/group to see if a group name bluetooth exists:

$ cat /etc/group | grep blue

If it exists, you obviously don't need to add the group, only add users to the group:

$ sudo usermod -G bluetooth -a <username>

In the distro I'm using, this was all that was required to make the Controller responsive in bluetoothctl.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 06 '19 at 04:08

0

I had the same issue. After a long research found out that the driver was not installed. Check that answer https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/545019/bluetooth-doesnt-work-in-debian-10 and see if your drivers are installed correctly =)

answered Dec 06 '19 at 04:08

Bruno

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bluetoothctl No default controller available

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