Bug 94056

Summary:	PulseAudio fails to detect bluetooth speakers
Product:	PulseAudio	Reporter:	Stefan Nagy <stefan.nagy>
Component:	modules	Assignee:	pulseaudio-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED	QA Contact:	pulseaudio-bugs
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	lennart
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	x86-64 (AMD64)
OS:	Linux (All)
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Attachments:	log file (no workaround) log file (workaround 2) log file (workaround 3)

Description Stefan Nagy 2016-02-09 00:00:33 UTC

Created attachment 121606 [details]
log file (no workaround)

After pairing bluetooth speakers with my notebook I never had any problems connecting them, but they don't appear in GNOME audio settings (or pavucontrol) as audio output device.

The first workaround I used for months was to restart bluetoothd before connecting the speakers – then it worked, after connecting the speakers they were listed in GNOME audio settings. Several weeks ago I read that this problem had something to do with GDM capturing the A2DP sink on session start, so to prevent GDM from doing that I followed a debian wiki entry [1]. This second workaround was more convenient, now every time I connected my speakers they were listed in GNOME audio settings immediately. Some days ago I read that it wasn't necessary to prevent GDM from starting pulseaudio. The only thing I'd have to do is to prevent module-bluetooth-discover from being started by default but to start it with X11 [2]. This third workaround works for me too.

As I understand it, the pulseaudio module module-bluetooth-discover is responsible for detecting available bluetooth audio devices using BlueZ. GDM starts a pulseaudio process before the user does and module-bluetooth-discover in fact works - but for the GDM pulseaudio process, not the one that gets started with X11.

I verified that by connecting my bluetooth speakers in GDM (I can connect my speakers to the last used paired device by pushing a button). After connecting the speakers, GDM used them for audio output immediately. After that I started a GNOME session and my bluetooth speakers were not used as audio output and not listed in GNOME audio settings as audio output device. When I switched to the virtual console running GDM my bluetooth speakers were still used for audio output.

I'll attach three pulseaudio log files: pulse.log is without any workaround, pulse-workaround2 with the workaround described in the debian wiki [1], and pulse-workaround3 with the workaround described in Comment 1 of the gnome-bluetooth bug report [2].


[1] https://wiki.debian.org/BluetoothUser/a2dp#Troubleshooting
[2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=749208#c1

Comment 1 Stefan Nagy 2016-02-09 00:02:29 UTC

Created attachment 121607 [details]
log file (workaround 2)

Comment 2 Stefan Nagy 2016-02-09 00:02:51 UTC

Created attachment 121608 [details]
log file (workaround 3)

Comment 3 Stefan Nagy 2016-09-13 12:54:32 UTC

I'm not sure but this could be a duplicate of bug 90490.

Comment 4 GitLab Migration User 2018-07-30 10:17:51 UTC

-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to freedesktop.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/issues/325.

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