Asus Bluetooth Dongle with Atheros (ath3k) chip - OpenSUSE - probe failed with error -5

Question

I'm trying to use an Asus USB Bluetooth Dongle in OpenSUSE. Unfortunately when I plug it in, dmesg gives me the following output:

usb 8-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
usb 8-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0cf3, idProduct=3000
usb 8-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
ath3k: probe of 8-2:1.0 failed with error -5

lsusb gives the following output:

Bus 005 Device 004: ID 0cf3:3005 Atheros Communications, Inc.

The modules ath3k and bluetooth are loaded, but neither bluedevil nor the OpenSUSE bluetooth adapter tool detect the stick.

I'm using the 2.6.37.6-0.20-desktop kernel from the OpenSUSE repositories under openSUSE 11.4 32bit. The following packages are installed:

• bluedevil
• bluez
• bluez
• compat
• bluez-firmware
• bluez-gstreamer
• bluez-hcidump
• bluez-test
• gnome-bluetooth
• libbluedevil1
• libbluetooth3
• libgnome-bluetooth8

Answer 1

After some searching I found out, that obviously the firmware for the ath3k chip on the dongle was missing. This was indicated by "/dev/.udev/firmware-missing/ath3k-1.fw". In the wireless section of kernel.org I found a git repository that contains that missing firmware image.

After copying ath3k-1.fw to "/lib/firmware" the stick was recognized without further changes to the system.