Ubuntu – Bluetooth and speaker occasionally working on ASUS N550JV

14.04asusbluetoothsoundwireless

I use a ASUS N550JV laptop with Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows 8 dual boot. The Bluetooth module is atheros ar3012. Since the day Ubuntu is installed, the behavior of Bluetooth and speaker is weird. They are not totally dead. They sometimes work, but I find no pattern about when they work and when they don't. Sometimes Bluetooth works right after start up. In other time, the Bluetooth icon does not show up in menu bar (I have "Show Bluetooth status shown in menu bar" checked in settings). When I enter settings, Bluetooth is shown to be off. Even though I can set it to On by clicking it, the device menu below still shows "Bluetooth is disabled" and I cannot search and add device (I use a Bluetooth mouse). Also, if I close the settings and open it again, Bluetooth will be set to off again. The same is with the speaker. Sometimes it works right after startup but sometimes it just refuse to work. I am so confused. Could anyone tell me how to solve this problem? Thanks in advance.

P.S. Every time I start up, at the page where I enter my password to log in, it always pops up a window titled "Authentication required by Wi-Fi network" and asks me for wifi password. But even if I type in the password, the connect button is still grayed out. Does this has anything to do with the problems above?

Edit: I checked /var/log/dmesg and the error about bluetooth is as follow:

[ 5.032070] Bluetooth: Error in firmware loading err = -110,len = 448, size = 1184
[ 5.032126] Bluetooth: Loading sysconfig file failed
[ 5.032166] ath3k: probe of 3-5:1.0 failed with error -110

Best Answer

There is a bug report that you can examine here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1260825

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.bluez.kernel/48232

Users have tried several things that have worked only sporadically, not worked at all, or seemingly fixed the problem. However, it appears that the root cause of the bug has not been definitively identified or fixed.

A quick summary of some tricks that you can try:

Toggle bluetooth using rfkill

sudo rfkill block bluetooth
sudo rfkill unblock bluetooth

List blocked antennas with

rfkill list

Toggle wifi with keyboard

This is Fn+F2 on the n550jv

Long shutdown period

Leave the machine powered down for some time before booting. This is starting to sound like black magic, though.

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