[Solved] Cant Enable Bluetooth / Missing Firmware

[SeeYouNextTuesday]

Hi, been trying quite a while now to get a TP-Link UB500 bluetooth adopter working on my new install. I can only see old threads here related to my problem.
Running Debian 5.27.5 KDE
Plasma 5.103.0
Kernel version 6.1.0-18-amd64 (64-bit)
PC HP Elite Desk 800 mini with 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-6700T CPU @ 2.80GHz
Ram 16 gig

I cant enable via the GUI
hcitool dev shows no devices.

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hciconfig -a
hci0:   Type: Primary  Bus: USB
        BD Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00  ACL MTU: 0:0  SCO MTU: 0:0
        DOWN 
        RX bytes:21 acl:0 sco:0 events:2 errors:0
        TX bytes:6 acl:0 sco:0 commands:2 errors:0
        Features: 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
        Packet type: DM1 DH1 HV1 
        Link policy: 
        Link mode: PERIPHERAL ACCEPT 

This appears to show the firmware / driver for my adopter is not installed.

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sudo dmesg | grep -i bluetooth

[    5.297639] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[    5.297658] NET: Registered PF_BLUETOOTH protocol family
[    5.297659] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[    5.297678] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[    5.297680] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[    5.297685] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[    5.363125] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: examining hci_ver=0a hci_rev=000b lmp_ver=0a lmp_subver=8761
[    5.364115] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rom_version status=0 version=1
[    5.364119] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin
[    5.364920] bluetooth hci0: firmware: failed to load rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin (-2)
[    5.364983] bluetooth hci0: firmware: failed to load rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin (-2)
[    5.365005] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin failed with error -2
[    5.365008] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: firmware file rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin not found
[    6.561220] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[    6.561228] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[    6.561237] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[  217.454234] Bluetooth: hci1: RTL: examining hci_ver=08 hci_rev=000c lmp_ver=08 lmp_subver=8821
[  217.455185] Bluetooth: hci1: RTL: rom_version status=0 version=1
[  217.455190] Bluetooth: hci1: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8821c_fw.bin
[  217.455208] bluetooth hci1: firmware: failed to load rtl_bt/rtl8821c_fw.bin (-2)
[  217.455221] bluetooth hci1: firmware: failed to load rtl_bt/rtl8821c_fw.bin (-2)
[  217.455224] bluetooth hci1: Direct firmware load for rtl_bt/rtl8821c_fw.bin failed with error -2
[  217.455228] Bluetooth: hci1: RTL: firmware file rtl_bt/rtl8821c_fw.bin not found
[  713.170188] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[  713.170196] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[  713.170201] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11

Here are the entries in my sources file

eb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.5.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 NETINST with firmware 20240210-11:27]/ bookworm contrib main non-free-firmware

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware contrib
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main non-free non-free-firmware contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main non-free non-free-firmware contrib

# bookworm-updates, to get updates before a point release is made;
# see https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debi ... _backports
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free non-free-firmware contrib
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free non-free-firmware contrib

# This system was installed using small removable media
# (e.g. netinst, live or single CD). The matching "deb cdrom"
# entries were disabled at the end of the installation process.
# For information about how to configure apt package sources,
# see the sources.list(5) manual.

The system is up to date.

Any help or something I missed would be great.

J

[bbbhltz]

Hi,

Have you installed the firmware-realtek package?

Try running this command:

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$ rfkill list bluetooth

You may need to install rfkill

It should hopefully say it isn't soft/hard blocked.

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# rfkill unblock bluetooth

will fix that.

Let us know if anything works or not.

[SeeYouNextTuesday]

Quick follow up this should show the loaded bluetooth moduels...

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 lsmod | grep bluetooth
bluetooth             958464  15 btrtl,btmtk,btintel,btbcm,bnep,btusb
ecdh_generic           16384  1 bluetooth
rfkill                 36864  8 hp_wmi,bluetooth
crc16                  16384  2 bluetooth,ext4

J

[SeeYouNextTuesday]

Running rfkill gives me this output

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rfkill list bluetooth
0: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

Also quick boot is disabled though I'm not sure how that matters but I guess something would not load after a reboot.

J

[SeeYouNextTuesday]

Thank you sooo much to @bbbhltz running...

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 sudo apt install firmware-realtek 

... and then rebooting finally solved this form me.

Thank you

J

[Aki]

Thank you sooo much to @bbbhltz running...

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 sudo apt install firmware-realtek 

... and then rebooting finally solved this form me.

I'm glad you sorted it out. :)

Please, mark the discussion as "solved" manually adding the text tag "[Solved]" at the beginning of the subject of the first message (after other tags, if any). It is also an opportunity to the make the subject more understandable to other forum users and readers, if necessary; i.e. :

[Solved] TP-Link UB500 bluetooth adapter - Cant Enable Bluetooth / Missing Firmware

Happy Debian !