So, I recently made the leap from Ubuntu 18.04 to 24.04, and let me tell you, I was stoked about all the new features and improvements. Everything seemed to be running smoothly until I noticed something weird: my Thunderbolt functionality just isn’t working anymore! It was rock-solid on 18.04, and now I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what went wrong.
I’ve got a Thunderbolt dock that I’ve been using to connect various peripherals—like my external monitors and other devices—but after the upgrade, nothing gets detected. I’ve checked connections, unplugged and replugged everything, rebooted a million times, and even attempted to update my drivers, but it’s like the system is just ignoring the Thunderbolt connection altogether.
I did some digging online and saw a few forum threads that touched on similar issues after upgrading. Some mentioned kernel changes in the newer Ubuntu version that might affect Thunderbolt support. I’ve even played around with the BIOS settings related to Thunderbolt to see if that might spark some life into the connection, but no luck there either.
Honestly, I’m really hoping someone out there has cracked this nut. Has anyone else run into this problem? If so, how did you get your Thunderbolt back up and running? I’m starting to feel a bit frustrated since I rely on this setup for work and multitasking. I always thought Ubuntu was supposed to be user-friendly, especially with hardware integration, but now I’m feeling a bit left out in the dark.
Any tips or troubleshooting steps would be greatly appreciated! Have any of you found any workarounds or modifications in settings that might help? Or is there something obvious I’m just missing here? I’d love to hear from anyone who’s faced this issue and managed to fix it, or if you’ve just got some pointers to get me going in the right direction. Thanks!
Sounds like a frustrating situation with your Thunderbolt setup after the upgrade! I feel you—it’s tricky when things that used to work fine suddenly don’t.
First off, it’s great that you checked the connections and did some reboots. That’s always a classic move! Since you mentioned the kernel changes, you might want to check if you are running the latest kernel version that’s compatible with Ubuntu 24.04. Sometimes, the default kernel doesn’t play well with certain hardware.
Have you tried running the following command in the terminal to see if your system recognizes the Thunderbolt devices?
If you see your devices listed there, that’s a good sign. If not, then it might be an issue with the driver or something related to Thunderbolt support in the new kernel.
When you played around in the BIOS, did you check if Thunderbolt is enabled? Sometimes, there might be different security settings related to Thunderbolt that can restrict its functionality. If there’s an option for “No security” or “User authorization,” you could give those a try temporarily to see if they help.
Also, don’t forget about the
bolt
tools if they aren’t installed already. You can get them using:This might help manage Thunderbolt devices once everything’s plugged in. After installing it, try running
boltctl
in the terminal and see what it outputs.If none of that works, it might also be worth checking the Ubuntu forums or filing a bug report, as others might be experiencing the same issue. Sometimes rolling back to a prior kernel version can stabilize things temporarily until a fix is rolled out, too.
Hope this helps a little! Good luck, and feel free to share what you find later on!
Your Thunderbolt issue after upgrading to Ubuntu 24.04 could be related to several factors, particularly kernel changes that may affect device compatibility. First, make sure that the Thunderbolt configuration is enabled in your BIOS settings; look for options such as “Thunderbolt support” or “Security Level” and ensure they are set correctly. Next, check if the required Thunderbolt drivers are installed on your system. You can do this by executing the command
sudo apt install thunderbolt-tools
in the terminal to install necessary packages and utilities that manage Thunderbolt connections. This tool can also help you verify if your Thunderbolt devices are recognized at all.If the device still isn’t detected, run
ls /sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/
in the terminal to check if any Thunderbolt devices appear. Another useful command isdmesg | grep -i thunderbolt
, which may provide logs relating to Thunderbolt device recognition and help identify what might be failing. Additionally, testing with a different kernel version can sometimes resolve these issues. You can usesudo apt install linux-generic-hwe-24.04
to try alternative kernels. If you’ve confirmed that hardware connections are solid and configurations are correctly set, the community forums might also have users who’ve managed to solve similar problems; their solutions could be helpful as well.