Getting Bluetooth Working

Getting Bluetooth working with Fedora Core 4 and my new Sony Ericsson Z520a (purchased along with a 2-year Cingular contract) was remarkably easy. The steps were:

• Install FC4 and make sure that the following packages have been included (not all are necessary for the phone but they don't hurt, either):

      yum install  gnome-bluetooth openobex-apps bluez-hcidump \
        bluez-utils bluez-pin bluez-libs bluez-utils-cups
  

• Follow the directions at this site, which are repeated here for convenience:
  1. Edit the pin_helper line in your /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf file to look like this:

       pin_helper /etc/bluetooth/feed-pin.sh
     

  2. Remove the comments from the auth and encrypt lines at the bottom of the file:

       auth enable;
       encrypt enable;
     

  3. Then create the /etc/bluetooth/feed-pin.sh file, with this content:

       #!/bin/sh
       echo "PIN:XXXX" (Replace XXXX with any 4 digit number you like)
     

     along with

       chmod 700 /etc/bluetooth/feed-pin.sh
     

  4. Restart Bluetooth services

       service bluetooth restart
     

• The next step was to associate the computer (in this case, a ThinkPad T42p with built-in Bluetooth adapter) with the phone. After that, the gnone-panel Bluetooth File Sharing tool was started:

    Applications --> System Tools --> Bluetooth File Sharing
  

  and it was a breeze to send files from the phone to the computer.
• The final step was to send files from the computer to the phone. This was accomplished by first determining the phone's bluetooth address with:

    $ hcitool scan
    Scanning ...
          00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx       PHONE_NAME
  

  and then using the command-line tool:

    obex_push  00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx  ringtone.mp3
  

  which resulted in a new ringtone on the phone. Nice!
• Update: On Fedora Core 5, the obex_push above does npot work but the command:

    gnome-obex-send --dest 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Ext_Ways.mp3
  

  does.