So thunderbolt on my computer is working and its pretty much a godsend for me, however the Thunderbolt menu in KDE settings says thunderbolt is not available, what is going on?
watching bc currently went out of my way building a pc with thunderbolt and looking out for tips/tricks to use with linux (esp KDE) when i get it all assembled.
Assuming we’re talking about the Thunderbolt page in System settings:
- What distro are you using?
- Does it start showing things when you plug in a Thunderbolt device?
- If not, does it start showing things when you run
systemctl start boltin a terminal?
openSUSE Tumbleweed
No, even when i run the command you gave me it does not show my thunderbolt dock, despite the dock being fully usable and operational
Here is an image of what it looks like now
I do not have any other thunderbolt devices other than this dock, it is a WD15 USB-C thunderbolt 3 docking station
As you can see, it is very clearly working, (except when the port on the laptop is at a certain angle but whatever)
Hmm, maybe docks don’t show up here because they’re basically pass-through devices?
Could be, although on lsusb it shows up, i guess this may be silly, but is there a command for listing thunderbolt devices?
Actually, they show up for me installing the plasma thunderbolt package in reading this to see myself (didn’t know there was a kde handler).
Note, it weirdly doesn’t reflect a readable color here (ahem, fixme), but I see my TB dock and my Sonnet carrier for a 10g nic I use.
This is a lenovo t15g g2 laptop too by the way, 11th gen intel i7.
might i ask the name of the package you used? and whether it is installed by default?
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This is arch linux, plasma 6.0.4 currently, 6.8.7 kernel.
I actually just installed the plasma-thunderbolt reading your post to check it out, but I had bolt already from something pulling it in, as I never had directly that I remember.
$ pacman -Q | grep bolt
bolt 0.9.7-1
plasma-thunderbolt 6.0.4-1
pre installed on kubuntu 22.04
It works for me. see screenshot
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20240430
KDE Plasma Version: 6.0.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.1.0
Qt Version: 6.7.0
Kernel Version: 6.8.8-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 12 × Intel® Core™ i7-9850H CPU @ 2.60GHz
Memory: 125.1 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 630
Manufacturer: HP
Product Name: HP ZBook 17 G6
lspci | grep -i thunder
05:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
06:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
06:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
06:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
06:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
07:00.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 NHI [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
3b:00.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
3c:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)
3d:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)
3d:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)
3e:00.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
zypper search bolt
S | Name | Summary | Type
—±-------------------------±--------------------------------------------------±-------
i+ | bolt | Thunderbolt 3 device manager | package
| bolt-tools | Bolt Tools | package
i+ | plasma6-thunderbolt | Plasma frontend for Thunderbolt 3 security levels | package
What do you get with this cmd? systemctl status bolt
â—Ź bolt.service - Thunderbolt system service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bolt.service; static)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2024-05-04 17:00:50 EDT; 1 day 2h ago
Docs: man:boltd(8)
Main PID: 1308 (boltd)
Status: “authmode: enabled, force-power: unset”
Tasks: 5 (limit: 4915)
CPU: 63ms
CGroup: /system.slice/bolt.service
└─1308 /usr/libexec/boltd
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: [c8010000-0070-HP ZBook 17 G6 ] dbus: exported device at /org/freedesktop/bolt/devices/c8010000_0070…
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: [0029a908-bb92-Thunderbolt Dock G2 ] dbus: exported device at /org/freedesktop/bolt/devices/0029a908_bb92…
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: [00a67895-085f-Thunderbolt Dock G2 ] dbus: exported device at /org/freedesktop/bolt/devices/00a67895_085f…
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: [006e1928-9af9-Thunderbolt3 SSD ] dbus: exported device at /org/freedesktop/bolt/devices/006e1928_9af9…
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: probing: started [1000]
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 systemd[1]: Started Thunderbolt system service.
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: [0029a908-bb92-Thunderbolt Dock G2 ] parent is c8010000-0070…
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: [0029a908-bb92-Thunderbolt Dock G2 ] connected: authorized (/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:05:00.0/0000:06:00.0/>
May 04 17:00:50 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: [0029a908-bb92-Thunderbolt Dock G2 ] udev: device changed: authorized → authorized
May 04 17:00:53 ZBook-17-G6 boltd[1308]: probing: timeout, done: [2709026] (2000000)
usr_40476@localhost:~> lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 08)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Skylake GT2 [HD Graphics 520] (rev 07)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 08)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 21)
00:15.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 (rev 21)
00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Active Management Technology - SOL (rev 21)
00:17.0 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev f1)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (4) I219-LM (rev 21)
01:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS525A PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)
usr_40476@localhost:~>
usr_40476@localhost:~> systemctl start bolt
usr_40476@localhost:~> systemctl status bolt
â—Ź bolt.service - Thunderbolt system service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bolt.service; static)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2024-05-05 19:49:03 EDT; 1s ago
Docs: man:boltd(8)
Main PID: 1832 (boltd)
Status: "authmode: enabled, force-power: wait"
Tasks: 5 (limit: 4915)
CPU: 94ms
CGroup: /system.slice/bolt.service
└─1832 /usr/libexec/boltd
usr_40476@localhost:~>
and good lord thats a lot of RAM, what do you do on that computer anyway? (wow)
You didn’t get your grep on. 
lspci | grep -i thunder
grep didnt show anything
I am almost wondering if the dock is just firmware controlled
My Lenovo Thunderbolt 4 Dock (40B0) that was a nightmare, with firmware only updates from windoze. The Caldigit has no firmware loads better or worse, but was my fallback choice after giving up on stability on the Lenovo dock. I could never get video stable from randomly glitching, changing display info randomly, things that made it painful to use.
The Caldigit was far more stable, and that isn’t saying much.
I get the same sort of odd video output issues and inconsistent resets between both, which I presume is mostly due to drivers and Nvidia not ever supporting linux adequately. Add in a hybrid video solution, even with the nvidia preferred over intel in bios, and it’s entirely best effort still.
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Exactly with the windoze update. Which is one reason why I keep it around.