Disable bluetooth at startup with gnome-bluetooth

[Axx83]

Hi. I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic and since the bluetooth in my notebook works perfectly with the gnome-bluetooth applet, especially turning it on and off, I'd like to issue at startup the command that the applet issue every time it's used. Currently the system turns bluetooth on at each restart not remembering its last status and I see no other way around then my eventual solution.

Thanks

[Axx83]

Guys, any help ?

[darius.k]

I was looking for a solution for this as well. I didn't find one.
It's annoying to have to turn off bluetooth every time you boot and don't use it. And if your forget it sucks on your laptop batteries.

Maybe open a bug for this at launchpad?

[Axx83]

Sure it might be a very good idea, but I guess there's already more than one open on this subject

[carimbonon]

I could not find any graphical method so I had to do it this way:
First ALWAYS backup configuration files ! !

sudo cp /etc/bluetooth/main.conf /etc/bluetooth/main.conf.OLD

once backed up edit main.conf file

sudo nano /etc/bluetooth/main.conf

Inside main.conf look for entry:

InitiallyPowered = true

and change the value to false

Save with Ctrl+X and restart GDM to see the effect :

/etc/init.d/gdm restart

Remember to save any file in use before restarting the graphical session

I have read this tutorial but seems a little bit out of date.

[Axx83]

Thanks carimbonon ! That works perfectly

[lostthetrail]

Thank you for the great solution, but...

gnome-bluetooth doesn't seem to recognize that I have changed this value and always shows that I have bluetooth enabled. Anyone find a way to solve this problem that will have the applet reporting correctly as well?

[wagalaweia]

According to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ez/+bug/381913 there is the problem that the entries InitiallyPowered and RememberPowered seem to be ignored (or perhaps overwritten by some other settings). However, there is mentioned a workaround, which works in ubuntu 11.04 and very likely elsewhere, too:

Calling from the commandline...

rfkill block bluetooth

...disables bluetooth in the same way, as a click on 'decativate' does. You can then manually enable/disable it later.

So, it is a good idea to just add the above command to your .profile file in your home-directory, then the bluetooth manager gets loaded, but deactivated on each startup.

[lvanderree]

Thanks, rfkill block bluetooth seems to do the trick!

[Lupius]

So how do you manually start up bluetooth after disabling it?