Thunderbolt Dock problems

Hardware Support
1

Since my laptop supports Thunderbolt and I have an external NVMe SSD in a Thunderbolt enclosure, I use this drive regularly.
But I only have 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports on my laptop, so I decided to buy a Thunderbolt dock—and that’s when things started to go wrong.
After booting up, a device connected to the dock isn’t recognized.
Boltctl detects the dock and the external NVMe; both are authenticated, but I can’t find the NVMe under “disks” or “files.”
I also don’t see a mount point for a partition.

When I try it with a live USB, everything works without any issues.
I also tried a live USB for Mint, and that works as well.

  • The dock is an Icy Box IB-HUB801-TB4.
  • The external enclosure is from Acasis, a TBU405PRO,
  • and the NVMe SSD is a Samsung 980.
  • The os is 18.1 Pro

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be?
When I connect the Acasis enclosure directly to the Thunderbolt port, it is recognized immediately.

2

How is the Drive formatted? Is it visible in ''Disks'' or GParted? When You connect the Drive directly to Your Machine and not over the Dock, does it work then correctly?

3

The SSD is formatted as NTFS; when connected directly to the Thunderbolt port, it is visible and usable.

The problem lies with the dock.
It works right away on Windows, and also on Linux Mint.

But with Zorin, I was wrong: even when booting from the live USB, it isn’t recognized; I could see the internal drive but not the external one.

However, boltctl does detect the dock and the NVMe enclosure; you can see the UUIDs, and both are authorized. But when I try to mount a drive using the enclosure’s UUID (which is actually the NVMe’s UUID), it fails.

lsblk doesn’t see the external drive, and neither does disks.

I’ve already revoked the authorization, disconnected and reconnected the drive, and re-registered it, but the result remains the same.

4

Hmm ... it doesn't seem to like the Dock ... but it is interesting that it runs on Linux Mint. Maybe they have a Package or Driver that is miss on Zorin.

5

After trying some 100 fixes that did not work I upgraded the kernel from 6.17 to 6.18.6 and now I can hotplug my thunderbolt dock and external devices.
So problem solved

3 Likes
6

Only as an Info: At the Moment, You can receive an Update for the 7.0 Kernel. When You get it and it is installed, You could try it again.

2 Likes