Tag Archives: Mint 18

Fix no bluetooth devices found in Linux Mint

I had a peculiar issue today where I suddenly lost the ability to see any bluetooth devices on my Linux Mint 18.2 desktop utilizing a Plugable USB Bluetooth adapter.

The fix involved checking kernel messages for anything insightful. In my case this is what led me to the solution:

[ 608.988353] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: Patch brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-21e8.hcd not found
[ 609.156320] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: chip id 63
[ 609.172330] Bluetooth: hci0: LPP-3389-WIN
[ 609.173313] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM20702A1 (001.002.014) build 1764
[ 609.173347] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-21e8.hcd failed with error -2

After some googling I finally came across the solution here. The fix is to download the firmware for your bluetooth adapter and place it in the place the bluetooth kernel module expects it to be in, then to reload the bluetooth kernel module.

sudo mkdir -p /lib/firmware/brcm
sudo wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/plugable/bin/fw-0a5c_21e8.hcd -O /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-21e8.hcd
sudo rmmod btusb bnep bluetooth btrtl btintel bnep btbcm
sudo modprobe btusb bnep bluetooth btrtl btintel bnep btbcm

That did the trick! You can also reboot your machine instead of removing / re-loading the kernel modules and it will accomplish the same thing.

Mount folder from another system over SSH

I recently had a need to mount a folder over SSH to allow my file manager to browse through the files on a remote system. Two great resources led me to the solution to this problem: sshfs

I first came across this little tutorial on how to install sshfs on my shiny new Linux Mint 18 box:

sudo apt-get install sshfs
sudo mkdir /mnt/droplet #<--replace "droplet" with whatever you prefer
sudo sshfs -o allow_other,defer_permissions root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/ /mnt/droplet

Pretty slick. If you want to use a keyfile instead of being prompted for a password, you can use the IdentityFile option:

sudo sshfs -o allow_other,defer_permissions,IdentityFile=~/.ssh/id_rsa root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/ /mnt/droplet

You can have this handled in /etc/fstab for automounting. Thanks to this Arch Linux guide for the info. (The command below requires systemd.)

user@host:/remote/folder /mount/point  fuse.sshfs noauto,x-systemd.automount,_netdev,users,idmap=user,IdentityFile=/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa,allow_other,reconnect 0 0

I tweaked my /etc/fstab file a bit because it complained that allow_other required a configuration change. Since I’m the only user of this box it didn’t matter to me. Here is my configuration:

nicholas@remote:/ /home/desktop/remote fuse.sshfs noauto,x-systemd.automount,_netdev,users,idmap=user,IdentityFile=/home/desktop/.ssh/keyfile,reconnect,allow_other 0 0

I’m mounting the root folder of my remote machine into a folder named remote on my desktop machine. I generated ssh keyfiles so that no password was required. Now the mount shows up under “Devices” in my file manager and a simple click mounts the folder gets me there. Sweet.

Edit 2/25/18: Added allow_other option per this article