Headset is disconnected immediately

Antti Garding
2025-07-31T17:07:41Z

I am having a issue using my Bluetooth headset (Sony WH-1000XM3) in
Linux. When I turn it on, the headset is immediately connected, but
after that, it is also immediately disconnected. This
connect-disconnect is automatically repeated three times with some
seconds between the occasions.

My environment is a Lenovo Thinkpad E14 Gen 4 laptop running Xubuntu
22.04. The computer has an integrated WLAN + Bluetooth adapter based
on Intex AX201, connected on USB bus. WLAN works fine and also the
Bluetooth works when running Windows. I have read on Intel’s forum
that the driver for the chip should have been ok since kernel version
5.10. My distribution comes with 6.8 so this issue shouldn’t be about
that.

Log time ago, I managed to pair the headset and it is still listed as
a paired device. Trying to unpair it in the bluetoothctl console
results in error message saying the device doesn’t exist.

Here is what happens in bluetoothctl console when I try to connect the
headset manually:

[bluetooth]# connect 38:18:4C:D4:C2:94
Attempting to connect to 38:18:4C:D4:C2:94
[CHG] Device 38:18:4C:D4:C2:94 Connected: yes
Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed br-connection-canceled
[CHG] Device 38:18:4C:D4:C2:94 Connected: no
[CHG] Device 38:18:4C:D4:C2:94 Connected: yes
[CHG] Device 38:18:4C:D4:C2:94 Connected: no
[CHG] Device 38:18:4C:D4:C2:94 Connected: yes
[CHG] Device 38:18:4C:D4:C2:94 Connected: no

Here are some log prints related to Bluetooth in general:

sudo dmesg | grep -i blue
[ 2.899284] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[ 2.899534] NET: Registered PF_BLUETOOTH protocol family
[ 2.899535] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[ 2.899574] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[ 2.899593] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[ 2.899601] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[ 2.951909] Bluetooth: hci0: Device revision is 2
[ 2.951914] Bluetooth: hci0: Secure boot is enabled
[ 2.951915] Bluetooth: hci0: OTP lock is enabled
[ 2.951916] Bluetooth: hci0: API lock is enabled
[ 2.951917] Bluetooth: hci0: Debug lock is disabled
[ 2.951918] Bluetooth: hci0: Minimum firmware build 1 week 10 2014
[ 2.951920] Bluetooth: hci0: Bootloader timestamp 2019.40 buildtype
1 build 38
[ 2.952008] Bluetooth: hci0: DSM reset method type: 0x00
[ 2.960708] Bluetooth: hci0: Found device firmware: intel/ibt-0040-4150.sfi
[ 2.960752] Bluetooth: hci0: Boot Address: 0x100800
[ 2.960754] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware Version: 107-51.22
[ 3.272512] thinkpad_acpi: rfkill switch tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: radio
is blocked
[ 4.012759] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[ 4.012763] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[ 4.012770] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[ 4.684563] Bluetooth: hci0: Waiting for firmware download to complete
[ 4.684902] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware loaded in 1683777 usecs
[ 4.685041] Bluetooth: hci0: Waiting for device to boot
[ 4.700965] Bluetooth: hci0: Malformed MSFT vendor event: 0x02
[ 4.701034] Bluetooth: hci0: Device booted in 15702 usecs
[ 4.701904] Bluetooth: hci0: Found Intel DDC parameters:
intel/ibt-0040-4150.ddc
[ 4.704071] Bluetooth: hci0: Applying Intel DDC parameters completed
[ 4.707146] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware timestamp 2022.51 buildtype 1
build 56683
[ 4.707151] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware SHA1: 0xe2305c5c
[ 4.776168] Bluetooth: MGMT ver 1.22
[ 6.448715] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[ 6.448724] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[ 6.448727] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11

Are there any known solutions to this issue? If not, are there any
recommendations where to look for a solution? If this could be a bug,
I might be interested in trying to fix it.

By the way, I would have asked this on the user mailing list first,
but the BlueZ web page didn't mention how to subscribe to it, so I
decided to try this developer list.

BR,
Antti Garding