On Gentoo, it's horribly broken.  This will prevent your bluez host from pairing with any device requiring a PIN.  Observe:

% sudo hidd --search
Searching ...
        Connecting to device 00:0C:1D:C5:44:91
Can't get device information: Host is down

It's really lying to you.  About two seconds after the "Connecting to device" message, hidd tries to run bluepin, to pop up a dialog for you to enter the PIN.  However, bluepin, a Python script, can't open the display (which is the bug) throws a whole bunch of GTK errors, then causes python to receive a SIG11:

/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py:69: GtkWarning: could not open display
  warnings.warn(str(e), _gtk.Warning)
/usr/bin/bluepin:48: nbsp;Warning: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
  gtk.Dialog.__init__(self)

Then, segfault:

bluepin[22482]: segfault at 0000000000000000 rip 00002b29d54167dc rsp 00007fffd6dffcb0 error 4

Running xhost + or starting X as root doesn't make any difference.

As described here, just enter the PIN in /etc/bluetooth/pin, then change /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf accordingly:

# PIN helper
#pin_helper /usr/bin/bluepin;
pin_helper /etc/bluetooth/pin-helper

You'll probably have to update that /etc/bluetooth/pin file each time you pair a device, which requires a unique PIN.  This also allows you to pair devices without using X.

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