rtlbtfw(8)

rtlbtfw8

Load firmware for realtek 87xx/88xx bluetooth usb devices

Usage

rtlbtfw -d device_name -f firmware_path

rtlbtfw -h

Overview

The rtlbtfw utility downloads the specified firmware file to the specified ugen(4) device.

This utility will only work with Realtek 87XX/88XX chip based Bluetooth USB devices and some of their successors. The identification is currently based on USB vendor ID/product ID pair and interface class. For Realtek devices the vendor ID should be 0x0bda (USB_VENDOR_REALTEK) and the 0-th interface class/subclass/protocol should be a Bluetooth RF Wireless Controller. Non-Realtek devices are identified based on USB vendor ID/product ID pair.

Firmware files are available in the comms/rtlbt-firmware port.

The rtlbtfw utility will query the device to determine which firmware image and board configuration to load in at runtime.

The options are as follows:

-D

Enable verbose debugging.

-d device_name

Specify ugen(4) device name.

-I

Enable informational debugging.

-f firmware_path

Specify the directory containing the firmware files to search and upload.

-h

Display usage message and exit.

Exit status

The rtlbtfw utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

Releases

6 releases since FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE; the text changed 2 times.

  1. 14.3
  2. 14.4–14.5
  3. 15.0–16.0

Authors

rtlbtfw is based on ath3kfw(8) utility used as firmware downloader template and on Linux btrtl driver source code. It is written by Vladimir Kondratyev ⟨[email protected]⟩ under sponsorship from Future Crew LLC.

Bugs

Most likely. Please report if found.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.