I initially bought this for the Mac, as it is indeed supported. I know Linux is not a supported platform, but at least until kernel with 5.0.5 (and some a bit older and newer), it worked like a charm for my XPS 13 with Linux!
However, eventually since 5.1 (or a bit less, I didn’t take note unfortunately), it seems to be no longer detected. I had some pciport kernel errors at first, and today with the newer kernels, no messages.
While it still work well with the Mac, I will try to get a new thunderbolt cable to see if maybe it could be a cable issue.
As you mention, we do not support the TBT3-UDV with Linux systems. We will do our best to help point you in the right direction, however just to set honest expectations up front ultimately we may not be able to provide a solution.
That said, that the dock continues work properly with your Mac system would indicate that the dock hardware itself is working properly and to look elsewhere for the cause.
To that end, one quick way to isolate the behavior further would be to:
A. Temporarily remove the udev rule from the system.
B. Change the Thunderbolt security level within the System BIOS to ‘No Security’ from the default of ‘User Authorization’ (if not already). Example screenshot of this setting:
While not necessarily a solution, testing in the above manner will help rule out both the udev rule and the Thunderbolt security settings within the BIOS (and the host OS authentication process) as a contributor to the current behavior.
Sorry for the late reply, and thanks for your suggestions.
My BIOS is configured with “No security” from the beginning, this has not changed.
The udev rule in itself is not the problem, because it does not even get there anymore. It only triggers when the “thunderbolt” subsystem gets invoked, and this broke some time ago. The kernel receives a physical error from the pcie port, on plugging and unplugging:
Jun 22 10:59:25 gimli kernel: pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: AER: Corrected error received: 0000:00:1c.0
Jun 22 10:59:25 gimli kernel: pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Corrected, type=Physical Layer, (Receiver ID)
Jun 22 10:59:25 gimli kernel: pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: device [8086:9d10] error status/mask=00000001/00002000
Jun 22 10:59:25 gimli kernel: pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: [ 0] RxErr
Now, I also noticed that slightly touching the docking with my hand made the docking reset just like it would on an electrical brown out, there may well be a false contact somewhere in there, and macOS may be better at handling physical error. That’s why I am hesitant between some hardware/cable failure or kernel issue.
However, some things work:
Power still gets supplied to the laptop
My 2 4k monitors turn on when I manually tell them to.
I am afraid I am not sure of the cause of the error message you provided. The problem behavior has the hallmarks of a Thunderbolt Authentication problem, but given that Thunderbolt Security is set to ‘No security’ in the BIOS would appear to rule that out.
Can you confirm if the dock is still working as expected with your Mac?
Can you also confirm you are using the 0.5 meter 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 cable we included in the box with the dock to connect it to both of your systems?
The dock works well most of the time with the MacOS (sometimes, the USB hub is a bit flaky, i.e some device are not recognized), and there is the problem with the false contact thing (i.e. I hit my desk with my fist, desk moves, docking disconnects/reconnects like on a brown-out).
I confirm I am using the original cable. It’s the only one I have actually, so I can’t try with another one right now.
Thanks for getting back with the additional information. Your description of the behavior with the Mac system is not expected, so our next step is to get some additional information.
Please keep the dock connected to your Mac and send the output of our diagnostic utility PlugDebug → http://plugable.com/support/plugdebug to us directly via support@plugable.com with ‘For Ticket #- 275193’ in the subject line. This will allow us to match things up and examine some log files from your Mac system to help determine the next steps.
** Please also include your Amazon Order ID number for the dock purchase in your direct email **
*** Please do not post either the PlugDebug or Order ID within our public forum ***
