Docker: Unable to Setup Bluetooth/D-Bus

Installation
1

Dear community,

I am currently trying to add Bluetooth devices to HA. Until now, every attempt failed and HA does not start correctly, logging this error:

dbus_fast.errors.AuthError: authentication failed: REJECTED: ['EXTERNAL']

My setup is a Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian 11 (bullseye). The default user “pi” is able to use the Bluetooth device:

$ hcitool dev
Devices:
	hci0	B8:27:XX:XX:XX:XX

HA 2023.8.1 is started as a Docker image according to the documentation with this command:

$ docker run -d
    --name homeassistant
    --privileged
    --restart=unless-stopped
    -e TZ=Europe/Berlin
    -v /home/pi/homeassistant/config:/config
    -v /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro
    --network=host
    ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable

The other requirements mentioned in the Bluetooth section of the documentation are also met:

  • bluez 5.55 is installed
  • D-Bus implementation is dbus-broker 26
  • Kernel version is 6.1.21

Inside the container, I also get some strange output:

# bluetoothctl 
Waiting to connect to bluetoothd...dbus[166]: arguments to dbus_connection_get_object_path_data() were incorrect, assertion "connection != NULL" failed in file dbus-connection.c line 5969.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.

  D-Bus not compiled with backtrace support so unable to print a backtrace
Aborted (core dumped)

Does anyone have a hint what I can try next?

Thanks for your help!

2

A long LONG time ago I sethi this up but have not added any BT (not using it a lot).
I added this to make it work

docker run -d --privileged   ...etc.

EDIT : I am on a NUC running ubuntu

3

As mentioned in the original post, my Docker command contains all arguments that you mentioned. However, neither --privileged nor --net=host changed anything.

4

@Levantha perchance … have you resolved this issue? I’m just curious, as I’d like to get ahead of any issues. and because i need to understand more about how docker integrates with dbus/device.

are the dbus events being sent with username or UID to authenticate? i’m not sure how to check this. according to dbus-broker wiki’s comparison, dbus-daemon allows both username & UID.

i may need to run a GUI application with docker soon (and with device integration), so i need to know if dbus-broker may cause problems.

  • # 78012: a related bluetooth and home-assistant issue where dbus-broker is mentioned

I haven’t logged into this forum before, so I may not remember to check again after a day or two. but if you happen to respond, then thanks!

5

I am sorry, but to be honest, I kind of gave up after nobody seemed to have a solution. After upgrading to Debian bullseye I planned to give it another try, but did not find the time yet.

6

You can test with —net= host just to see if this is related. I get conflicting info about whether this may cause problems. Another user specifically said it helped while others say it shouldn’t matter.

If host networking works please report back and I have other suggestions

7

You can test with —net= host just to see if this is related.

As written in my original post, I already tried that option. Just now I repeated the tests with the current version of Debian Bookworm on the Raspberry Pi as well as the latest stable version of HA. Unfortunately I get the same errors, down to the line number.

8

I finally found the solution. During my first tests I created /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid, mapping the pi user of the host system. After removing both files, everything works as expected.