Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth and Gentoo

KraziKid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 128

I haven't been here for a while since I got my MSDN subscription and installed Windows Server 2003 Enterprise on my Server (Windows Server 2003 is by far the best Server OS I have ever used, and please don't flame me because of that, and do not start a Microsoft vs. Linux fight), but I am thinking about dual booting Gentoo with Windows XP on my workstation. The only problem is I use the Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth on my Workstation. There is no way I am going to stop using this keyboar/mouse combination. Does anyone have a guide for installing this under Linux? I have tried searching google, but have so far come up empty. Thanks in advance for the help.

puggy

btsg · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:39 am Post subject: Maybe Knoppix will find this

http://www.knoppix.org/

Knoppix has great hardware auto detection, try booting it and see if your bluetooth stuff is auto detected .... if Knoppix auto detects it there should be a way to get it work in Gentoo (unless you just want to install Knoppix)

KraziKid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 128

mmontg1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 129

I thought I'd give yall the start of an answer to this...

http://www.visi.com/~pmk/msbtkb-linux.html

I haven't got it to work yet with my keyboard....I haven't got it to compile correctly yet. It seems to bve NOT finding my .h files in /usr/src like:

#include <sys/sock.h>
and such. weird...

KraziKid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 128

puggy · Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2003 12:40 am Post subject:

Well. You could always repartition your drive, with current partition and gentoo linux, then at any point you can duck out of the install, and boot back into windows, then continue it later. So you can have a functional machine, as well as working on getting Gentoo up and running.

That bit of hacking looks good, you could try implementing the hack in knoppix, then installing gentoo from there and again implementing the hack.

As I said, I'll do the hard work and write you a guide if you'll just get me a MS BT Desktoip. :-D

Puggy
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Achilles · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2003 4:52 pm Post subject:

Anyone get this to work yet? I'm still trying to get mine to work (I got it to compile, but havent figured out how to get the keyboard/mouse communicating with the daemon).

Vanquirius · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2003 11:12 pm Post subject:

Just writing here to post a success story. I just got a MS Wireless Optical Desktop today, and reading that page (http://www.visi.com/~pmk/msbtkb-linux.html) seemed like a foreshadow of a huge headache and driver hacking. It wasn't.
I plugged the "station" in an USB port, put batteries in the keyboard and mouse.
Then I recompiled a kernel (gentoo-sources 2.4.20-r6) with Bluetooth support (I just built everything available as modules --- actually I just built the modules, no need for a new kernel), emerged the bluez* tools and... I realized the keyboard was working when I pressed a random key to test it. I don't even know if the bluez* tools were necessary of not; I just suppose hotplug took care of everything. All I need to do now is switch the ABNT2 layout of my old keyboard to American standards and bind those funky keys to something useful

dmesg:

KraziKid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 128

Vanquirius · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2003 4:35 pm Post subject:

I built Bluetooth kernel support as modules, but I suppose it should work built-in as well. It was quite a surprise that it worked so easily. Coupled with lineakd I even got those extra keys working.

Here's the relevant /etc/lineakkb.def section for anyone that is interested:

puddpunk · l33t Joined: 20 Jul 2002 Posts: 681 Location: New Zealand

smiler.se · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2003 12:22 pm Post subject:

Anyone knows if you can buy the mouse separately or another bluetooth mouse?
Im looking for a mouse to use on my bluetooth-capable laptop (but Im VERY) happy with the keyboard so I dont want to waste money on it.
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KraziKid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 128

smiler.se · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2003 8:32 pm Post subject:

Ok cool, lets go find a store

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russo79 · n00b Joined: 22 May 2003 Posts: 27

ManuChao, can you please post your kernel config and tell me exactly which bluez tools have you emerged?

I'm trying to make it work (only the mouse), but I'm having some problems.

Thanx in advance

russo79 · n00b Joined: 22 May 2003 Posts: 27

ManuChao, can you please post your kernel config and tell me exactly which bluez tools have you emerged?

I'm trying to make it work (only the mouse), but I'm having some problems.

Thanx in advance

Vanquirius · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 10:47 pm Post subject:

Sure. Here it is.
I emerged all bluez* tools you can find with emerge -s bluez, although I'm pretty sure you wouldn't need all of them.
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russo79 · n00b Joined: 22 May 2003 Posts: 27

Sorry to disturb you again ManuChao...

but i still can't get it working

what kernel did you use?
do you still emerge the bluez-kernel package

Can you post your kernel .config file so i can compare it with mine?
thnx

KraziKid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 128

feliperal · Apprentice Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 168

krazikid, you will need to use the gentoo-sources or 2.6 version of mm-sources. I would go with the gentoo-source-2.4.20-r7 I believe. I was able to get it to work by compiling all bluetooth as modules. Some of the options under bluetooth are for Ethernet over Bluetooth, but I figured that I might need them later.

If your kernel compiles correctly, you should see this in /lib/modules/linux-2.4.20-r7-gentoo/kernel/drivers/bluetooth:

feliperal · Apprentice Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 168

If anyone is interested , I'm going to try to build a basic LiveCD that will basically the same off of the servers, except with the addition of bluetooth. This way, off the bat, bluetooth will be available and you could easily install a fresh install of Gentoo Linux without connecting a old serial or usb keyboard. Let me know if anyone is interested or wants to help me. Thanks

KraziKid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 128

feliperal · Apprentice Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 168

Unfornately, the keyboard and mouse will not work with any bootloader. That's the real downside. The reason for this is that the kernel has not loaded the bluetooth drivers. This is also the case in Windows, you can't use those devices in the NT bootloader. So, if you want to access your windows partition or another one, just make three boot entries in the grub.conf or lilo.conf and comment the sections so that only one section that pertains to the OS you want to load is active, for example Gentoo or Windows.

KraziKid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 128