kubuntu bluetooth keyboard pairing problem

[Charlie Zender]

Hi All,

My bluetooth keyboard no longer pairs with my Ubuntu laptop.
Hardware: Dell Bluetooth Keyboard (yes, with fresh batteries)
Software: Kubuntu Jaunty (fully patched) (i.e., kbluetooth4...)

Background: Everything _was_ working with the connection between
my Dell Bluetooth keyboard and mouse until about one month ago.
Then the keyboard (but not the mouse) stopped pairing with the
computer after an "aptitude dist-upgrade;reboot" cycle.
Have now been through two more kernel upgrades and bluetooth keyboard
still not pairing correctly, though the mouse does pair correctly.

Symptoms: The keyboard "not pairing" means that the bluetooth
connection process works fine until I get to the dialog to confirm the
PIN on the keyboard:

"In order to complete the Pairing to your Bluetooth device, you have
to chooce a PIN an renter that on your device
Name: Dell BT Keyboard
Address: 00:07:61:A2:1D:39
PIN:_________________"

I take the instructions (which I think are ambiguous) in this dialog
to mean "type a four-digit PIN in the entry box on your laptop
keyboard and hit OK, then type the same PIN on your bluetooth keyboard
and the paring will complete". But no matter how I type the PIN, or which
keyboard I type it on first, the pairing never completes. In fact, I
can never enter any text into the dialog box from the bluetooth
keyboard. Typing anything on the bluetooth keyboard is what causes the
dialog box to appear, but I can never type anything _into_ the dialog
box from the bluetooth keyboard (only from the laptop keyboard).
I never knowingly changed the keyboard PIN from the factory default
which (I think) was the standard 0000 default.

Any ideas what's going wrong?

Thanks,
Charlie
-- 
Charlie Zender, Department of Earth System Science
University of California, Irvine (949) 891-2429 :)