Re: [gdm-list] Pairing bluetooth input devices before logging in?

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

Hey Jon,

On Wed, 2007-08-08 at 11:13 -0400, William Jon McCann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 8/7/07, Mourad De Clerck <mourad aquazul com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > In light of the gdm rework that has been going on, I was wondering if
> > and how the new gdm is going to handle bluetooth input devices.
> >
> > The use-case and problem is simply: if for some reason your input
> > devices are not paired, you'll simply be unable to type in your password
> > or select your user. The new and improved D-Bus based bluez stack and
> > bluez-gnome applet can probably handle pairing once logged in, but if
> > you can't log in...
> >
> > (While purely theoretical at the moment, Wireless USB could have the
> > same issues eventually)
> 
> That is a good point.  And may be yet another reason to make our GDM
> greeters more session-like.  I suppose one could run the necessary
> bits in the greeter session that enable pairing of devices.  If the
> settings are stored in GConf then we would also need to copy the
> necessary information into the GConf system defaults database in order
> for the gdm user to pick it 

Which devices are we talking about?

I guess the problem is mostly for desktop PCs with builtin Bluetooth, or
Bluetooth "proxy dongles" specific to the hardware used.

Those 2 cases are actually the same for Apple (builtin Bluetooth in
iMacs and such), and Logitech (Bluetooth proxy dongles).

We can switch, using a piece of software, the Bluetooth adapter between
the HID mode (which makes the devices appear as USB keyboard/mouse, for
use in the BIOS) and HCI mode (the dongle is now a Bluetooth adapter,
and the mouse/keyboard will try to connect to the dongle).

The problem is that we don't have any hardware docs, and we don't know
how to ask the proxy dongle details about the devices (such as Bluetooth
address of the devices it knows) when in HID mode, so we can't set them
up in advance. More details in this thread:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.bluez.devel/12584/focus=12601
(Note, you can make them work by disabling any kind of security on the
Bluetooth device, but I'd advise against it)

GDM shouldn't need to care about this.

If you're thinking about a different use case/different hardware, let me
know, but be aware that el-cheapo Taiwanese Bluetooth adapter and an
unrelated Bluetooth keyboard will not work out of the box, and will
never do (they don't know about each other, and there's no other way
than pairing them).

In this use case, it would be nice to be able to type a password using a
virtual keyboard, if the mouse is wired/working for example.

Cheers

-- 
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>