Monday, January 16, 2012

Ubuntu's Ugly Underside

So far I must say that I am really loving Ubuntu 11.10, aka Oneiric Ocelot. I'm still blown away by how fast it starts up. For something that is completely free it's pretty well supported, if you consider all of the online forums, Stack Exchange websites, blogs, etc. Since it's open source, I can't complain about bugs, and on the contrary, I think it's important to report them. Oneiric Ocelot has a bug with the bluetooth interface that affected me when I tried to pair my phone to send an apk (android package) to it. I was pretty frustrated, and it took me awhile to find any online resources that helped. I did learn a little about hcitools and bluez, but I'm scared with my extreme inexperience, I might break my box again, so I'm very cautious. Finally I found several bug reports in launchpad that exactly described the problem. So that's probably the first lesson: always check for bug reports. The fix so far for me was to pair the device manually using hcitool and bluez-simple-agent, them enabling personal file sharing for bluetooth, which was however tucked away and had I not known to look for it would never have found it. It can be access from the dash. The other part of the bug is slated to be fixed in Precise (12.04) coming out in April.

Here are the links to bug on launchpad:
#879923 No file transfers possible with cell phones, regression since oneiric alpha
#872044 Bluetooth 'Send files' returns permission denied error
#822141 Cannot receive or send files via bluetooth
#829703 "Select Device to Browse" dialog contains tiny listbox

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