Librem 14 Bluetooth on Qubes OS - How can I get my Bluetooth device connected to dom0 or one of my Qubes VMs?

Software Qubes OS
1

This post has several small questions in it but I will begin with the primary question (which will be re-stated and elaborated on later): How can I get my Bluetooth device connected to dom0 or one of my Qubes VMs?

I have recently purchased a Librem 14 and installed Qubes OS on it. Something I quickly noticed was that I am unable to do anything with Bluetooth from dom0 (Network Manager → New Connection → Bluetooth yields nothing).

I assumed on some level that dom0 was perhaps not supposed to be used with Bluetooth for security reasons (but I would still like to know how to setup Bluetooth on dom0) so I focused on a Standalone Ubuntu VM Qube to troubleshoot instead.

Firstly I set had the network set to sys-net but still cannot view any Bluetooth devices from within Ubuntu, in fact they say that I need to “connect a Bluetooth dongle” which implies they do not even detect the presence of a Bluetooth device. Naturally, I went through my Devices list in dom0 to try to find the Bluetooth device in the list but found none. It occurred to me that perhaps (considering that the Wifi and Bluetooth are on the same killswitch on Librem 14) that they are built into the same network card.

My last attempt to get Bluetooth working on my standalone Ubuntu VM was to go to its Devices list and attach my Network Card directly to the VM, but am given the following error: “Error: Devices tab: Can’t attach PCI device to VM in pvh mode”.

So to summarize these are my questions:

  1. Are the Bluetooth and Wifi devices on the same network card on Librem 14 and if so why can I not see the Bluetooth device in my Device List?
  2. Is it possible to use Bluetooth (for sound to a Bluetooth speaker for example) on dom0? And if not, why is Bluetooth an option under Qubes → System Tools → Network Connections → Add → Bluetooth?
  3. Is it considered bad opsec to connect Bluetooth to dom0 on Qubes and if so is there any way of mitigating the threat?
  4. How can I get my Bluetooth device connected to dom0 or one of my Qubes VMs (Windows, Ubuntu etc)?

I have been very impressed with the quality of knowledge to be found on this forum and have no doubt someone here will know the answer to my question. Thank you for your time and expertise.

2

I can not comment on the Qubes questions but I can in regard to the Bluetooth hardware. Yes, the BT interface in the L14 is the same as in the L13/l15/LMini, it is the Atheros ar3k, connected to the main CPU via USB. If you do an ‘lsusb’ you should see something like this:

Bus 001 Device 082: ID 04ca:300d Lite-On Technology Corp. Atheros AR3012 Bluetooth

To actually use this device a binary only firmware is needed which is not part of PureOS and likely also not part of Qubes. Once the firmware is installed and best after a reboot the Bluetooth interface should show up.

Cheers
nicole

3 Likes
3

Such questions a better asked on the Qubes forum. Some people there reported that Bluetooth worked for them.

1 Like
4

Bluetooth is working on Qubes OS via the safe sys-audio setup. See Librem 14 Bluetooth device invisible to dom0 and sys-usb - #6 by PeakUnshift - User Support - Qubes OS Forum.

2 Likes