Thunderbolt problems

Hardware Support
1

So last week my system suddenly crashed through the night, and then was very unstable the next day. Moving the mouse was laggy, the CPU kept spiking

I had to reinstall Zorin and start again, this time I'm using Wayland which seems better, Xorg was using 10% cpu before and seemed to be causing the CPU spikes.

I'm still having Thunderbolt problems, I'm using a Gigabyte Titan Ridge 2.0 PCIe card and 2 x NVME drives. Sometime the drive will dissapear, or it will lag when I'm listening to music from the drive.

I changed the bios to No Security for it.

Today, after it crashed I had to restart, and the drives didn't appear in Disks.

Checking

boltctl

The drives showed, and they showed as authorized under Settings

Privacy > Thunderbolt

But they didn't appear in the Disks, so I couldn't mount them. I had to disconnect and reconnect them to get them to appear

Does anyone know how to bring them online after a restart without having to physically reconnect them? Or have any suggestions why they are lagging and randomly disappearing?

Thanks

2

Right of the bat; You are Awesome for pointing out that you are doing this on Wayland.

1 Like
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No you're more Awesome!

I'm still confused, if boltctl shows the devices as being there, why aren't they recognized as online/connected/accessible as drives

Could it be?

  • LUKS encryption

I don't mind having to run a few commands to get them "online", it seems very odd to have to physically reconnect them :thinking:

Also is there a log I can check if they crash/disappear to troubleshoot why it's happening?

I've tried searching for Thunderbolt related issues, but didn't find much

4

Have you checked your BIOS Security tab?:
BIOS> Advanced > Chipset Configuration > Intel Thunderbolt

5

Yes, I changed it to

No Security

1 Like
6

Look what Mr. Awesome just spotted written in the O.P...
-sigh-

I do not see Wayland as being a particular solution to these issues. If your system is crashing, the drive disappearing, then we should examine what is going on there. It may be related to Thunderbolt crashing and not mounting.

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Unfortunately it seems a bit out of my expertize to diagnose this kind of problem, I may have to change to using a USB drive and revisit the issue later :face_with_head_bandage:

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that is what this forum is for; To combine our amateur powers and see what we come up with.

sudo apt install inxi

What is the out of

inxi -Fz

and

uname -a

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9

I had a similar problem with eSATA.
After some hassling, I decided to settle for USB 3.0 since the speed is not that much different.

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Modern USB 3.1 standards with 10GPBS to 40GPBS is pretty much every bit as fast as Thunderbolt. But you have to specifically use a USB port, that shows that high capacity number on it, not any USB port will do.

And truth is, with the inclusion of the new PCIE Gen 4 PCIE lanes, there is no reason why you can't achieve Thunderbolt speeds with the modern motherboards. I can tell you why he's having so many problems with Wayland, he got it from Yutani.

Ohhhhhh that Wayland Yutani corp, building better worlds. HAHA

2 Likes
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I've taken the card out for now, and will use USB.

Is this some AVP reference I'm unaware of? or is using Wayland controversial? All I know is x.org was at 6~10% CPU usage, and using Wayland appears less CPU intensive

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At idle, my CPU on Xorg will drop to 1% or 2%. Sometimes spike up to 4%.

Wayland is controversial, yes.
Personally, I really like the concept of Wayland and how it seeks to correct certain flaws in X-Window.
It cuts out the middle ground, allowing direct communication between the drivers and the windowing management.

However...

It doesn't work. And after over a decade of development this has not changed.
Wayland is being strongly pushed by certain Linux powers-that-be in spite of this. Currently, Wayland... mostly works. But on many apps, the whole thing will just crash. In other cases, applications just don't work.
In troubleshooting, one of the first things to check is if the user is on Wayland. It causes far more troubles than it fixes.

The amount of software porting support in Wayland is growing and in time, it may be quite viable. Until then: Use with caution.

2 Likes
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Thanks for the explanation, I wasn't aware of these issues.

I'll give Xorg another try, and see if things are better without the Thunderbolt card now.

14

Use with caution is what they used to tell us gamers, who planned to game on Linux, cause gaming on Linux used to be complete garbage. But now with the Steam Deck coming, it will improve Linux gaming. Soon, Windows gamers will start respecting us Linux gamers.

Because you gotta know, if you buy a Steam Deck, knock knock, your on Linux baby! So, finally, Linux is starting to get the recognition it deserves for gaming. And with RTX, direct X 12, and DLSS support coming in the next Nvidia driver update, its gonna make gaming even that much more brighter.

Also, glad we could help you figure out the Thunderbolt issue. Its funny cause, most of the time, PCIE cards don't cause issues, but sometimes they can fail, and cause all loads of problems.

I remember once I was working on a old computer for someone that would not connect to the internet, this is back before ethernet ports that came integrated in motherboards was a thing.

So I open the computer up, expecting maybe there was some large globs of dust shorting out connections with the ethernet card, which we called NIC's back then. Ohhhhhh, there sure was! Computer was completely filled with dust, what an insulated overheating blanket that was!

The dust overheated or shorted out that NIC so bad, it literally burned out the entire port and card, they were both dead. Owner had to buy a new motherboard. I told the owner, you got to clean out your computer every year man, just get yourself a can of air.

Now days we got AC-powered Air-blowers that are better on the environment then canned air, so I recommend those now days.

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