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Apple wireless Mighty Mouse on Ubuntu Dapper

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 02:08 PM



Ever since the introduction of Apple's Mighty Mouse, I often thought why didn't they do a bluetooth enabled Mighty Mouse? Well about two weeks ago Apple answered my question. Since the announcement, I've been very anxious to get one to see if it works in Linux with Bluez. Today I broke down and bought one. When first trying to pair my Mighty Mouse I got the following error:

# hidd --search
Connecting to device XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Can't create HID control channel: Connection refused

I then remembered how Apple always ships their bluetooth perpherals with encryption enabled. Which most bluetooth human interface device manufactuers fail to ship with, probably due to the vast array of bluetooth stacks available for the Windows operating system (yet another reason why Windows XP is NOT a modern operating system), and adoption of the encryption feature. With Bluez bluetooth stack on Linux this isn't the case. I then confirmed my suspicion by invoking the following as root via a terminal:

# hcitool info XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Requesting information ...
BD Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Device Name: Mighty Mouse
LMP Version: 1.2 (0x2) LMP Subversion: 0x314
Manufacturer: Broadcom Corporation (15)
Features: 0xbc 0x02 0x04 0x38 0x08 0x00 0x00 0x00



After the confirmation of , I then knew that my hcid.conf needed to be tweaked. I run Ubuntu Dapper, so the location of my hcid.conf is in /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf. Please adjust accordingly for your particular distribution of Linux.
I then uncommented the following line(s) in the device { ... } section of my hcid.conf:
Before:
# Authentication and Encryption (Security Mode 3)#auth enable;#encrypt enable;
After:
# Authentication and Encryption (Security Mode 3)auth enable;encrypt enable;
I then had to restart my bluetooth related daemons:

# /etc/init.d/bluez-utils restart

After that all I had to do try to pair my Mighty Mouse again:

# hidd --search
Searching ...
Connecting to device XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

I got a dialog box that asked for a pin number for pairing, I entered 0000.
After that I moved my Mighty Mouse and it JUST worked!!!!! I was at first VERY confused that the middle mouse button didn't work! But all I had to do was push the "round ball thing" down and click, and that's the middle mouse button!