This page documents two parts of what is working and what is not working with Thunderbolt on Unraid.

 

Part 1: The generic subsystems (for want of another name - perhaps someone can describe something technically more accurate here)

Part 2: Specific matches of PCIe hardware to Hosts systems

 

To date the following Thunderbolt subsystems are confirmed working on UnRaid:

Storage: Working

Networking: TBC

Display: Passthrough

Edited June 2, 20224 yr by Marshalleq
Clarity

Card Status:

 

Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge 2.0 (Flashed for Mac) - Installed on Asus X399 Prime-A - Card detected with short pins trick - Devices Autodetect

Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge 2.0 (Flashed for Mac) - Installed on Lenovo P700 (Thunderbolt disabled in BIOS) - Storage Working

 

Known Issues

Reboot sometimes freezes system while thunderbolt plugged in

Bolt tools are needed to properly authorise devices

Devices may become deauthorized on reboot

Edited June 3, 20224 yr by Marshalleq

This section to become the howto for how to get this going.  For now I will put my experience so far, which is to say it looks like it's working but am yet to get any fruit.

 

1. Jump pins 3 and 5 as outlined here , install the card and connect your devices.
2. The card should now show up in Unraid as a PCIe device lspci shows a number of lines similar to: 03:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] (rev 06)
3. Also for your storage you should see a line similar to: [   44.231417] thunderbolt 0-1: LaCie Rugged THB USB-C

4. Add the following line to the /etc/udev/rules.d/99-local.rules file: ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="thunderbolt", ATTR{authorized}=="0", ATTR{authorized}="1"

5. Navigate to /sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/domain0/yourdevicefolder

6. Display the contents of the authorized file: cat authorized

7. If this is currently a 0 then: echo 1 > authorized

8. Confirm it is now a 1: cat authorized

9. Reboot

10. Success, storage is now shown in the unraid GUI

 

 

Note that line 4 effectively disables all thunderbolt security if you're worried about that.  I've requested the bolt package be added to nerd tools as this apparently is the security manager for thunderbolt in linux.  There is also a package called thunderbolt-tools that provides tbtadm that seems to do something similar.  I am still to understand how much value these tools are considering this works now. 

Edited June 2, 20224 yr by Marshalleq

hmm i am lost here got the summary (for a noob) decoded.. see the Thunderbolt Storage device itself in PCI Devices and IOMMU Groups

 

IOMMU group 25:[1b4b:9548] 0b:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Device 9548 (rev b3)

 

but cant see any disk attached to it ...

 

Device is this https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=raidon+gr4670-tb3

On 7/1/2022 at 9:10 PM, Dtrain said:

but cant see any disk attached to it ...

I have the same issue on different hardware running unraid 6.10.

I'm trying to use an OWC ThunderBay 8 with a Gigabyte Titan Ridge GC 2.0 and an Asrock motherboard which does have a TB3 connector. I did not short any pins as I can just connect them to the mainboard. I can see the Titan Ridge in lspci.

I have enabled udev rules to authorize all devices but when I turn on the ThunderBay all I see in dmesg is this:

[20065.354797] thunderbolt 0-1: new device found, vendor=0x5a device=0xde19
[20065.354803] thunderbolt 0-1: Other World Computing ThunderBay 8

 

I can see /sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/0-0 for the Titan Ridge and 0-1 for the ThunderBay 8.

 

Now How do I now mount the disks?

after u attached the OWc thunderbay pls open Terminal and run this

echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan

 

 

4 hours ago, Dtrain said:

after u attached the OWc thunderbay pls open Terminal and run this

echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan

Oh thanks a lot so I was just looking in the wrong directory /sys/bus/thunderbolt for such a function... I'll try out this weekend. Didn't thought about that it might be on the PCI.

Regarding thunderbolt networking
on 6.11rc4 it is working "native"

I still need to use "ip link set thunderbolt 0 up" an of course assign static IP with ifconfig

the speed is not stable

when using pc as server

 

when using unraid as server

Anyone tried a MSI thudnerbolt4 card?

For me it would be cheaper & than getting a thunderbolt to 10g ethernet adapter (for macbook pro) + 10g ethernet pcie for my unraid system.

So I finally tried your suggestion @Dtrain but I just got the errors seen in the image. I found out that some people with similar hardware suggested the following kernel config, would it be a bad idea to modify the append line as suggested here like so or would that break Unraid, I can always just pop the stick into my machine and fix it, right?

 

EDIT: Got it working, I forgot to set some BIOS options, namely "Above 4G decoding", "Re-Size BAR" and in a completely different section called AMD PBS to simply enable Thunderbolt support with no security, thanks Asrock. Now I see the thunderbolt drives, yay! Don't even know if I need the boot config.

 

append initrd=/bzroot pci=realloc,assign-busses,hpbussize=0x33

Edited November 15, 20223 yr by gentux
Found solution

Apologies for reviving a semi-old topic, but did you ever manage to have this happen at boot? udev rules are not persistant unless you add things to the go file on startup and still then, are iffy.

First, thanks @Marshalleq for the post and research! As @Defq0n mentioned, udev rules don't seem to be persistent. I have two Envoy Express drives (https://www.owc.com/solutions/envoy-express) working with Unraid. Below are instructions that I followed to get it working:

1. Navigate to /sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/domain0/0-0/(0-1 & 0-3 are my devices, I used cat device_name to verify within each device folder)
2. Display the contents of the authorized file: cat authorized
3. If this is currently a 0 then: echo 1 > authorized
4. Confirm it is now a 1: cat authorized
5. Run echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan

At this point, I now am able to see the drives!

 

Next step is to do this on boot. Used gpt4 to create a bash script: https://github.com/rossingram/Thunderbolt-Unraid/blob/main/thunderbolt_setup.sh and will report back on stability, etc. Hope this helps.

On 8/31/2022 at 12:10 PM, Omri said:

Regarding thunderbolt networking
on 6.11rc4 it is working "native"

I still need to use "ip link set thunderbolt 0 up" an of course assign static IP with ifconfig

the speed is not stable

when using pc as server

 

 

when using unraid as server

Sorry for posting here after so many months but... 

 

I would like to build a DIY NAS to connect with my Mac: will it work the Thunderbolt networking? So that I will have my storage on NAS connected by the way of TH ethernet directly to my Mac? And if it's so, which performance should I expect? I have a GC-Titan Ridge 2.0 in my system.

On 6/16/2024 at 7:08 PM, Hackaro said:

Sorry for posting here after so many months but... 

 

I would like to build a DIY NAS to connect with my Mac: will it work the Thunderbolt networking? So that I will have my storage on NAS connected by the way of TH ethernet directly to my Mac? And if it's so, which performance should I expect? I have a GC-Titan Ridge 2.0 in my system.

Hello! How did it work for you in the end? I’m going the same way with Unraid, and setting up a server with a motherboard that already has TB4…stumbled on this old post of yours…I made it work in another NAS running OMV and a Maple Ridge TB card, but I’m unsure about Unraid…

Edited August 25, 20241 yr by Botafoguense1965

On 8/25/2024 at 5:27 PM, Botafoguense1965 said:

Hello! How did it work for you in the end? I’m going the same way with Unraid, and setting up a server with a motherboard that already has TB4…stumbled on this old post of yours…I made it work in another NAS running OMV and a Maple Ridge TB card, but I’m unsure about Unraid…

well .. I moved to TrueNAS and Tunderbolt networking is working perfectly fine: 20gbps bi-directional with my Macs

On 8/28/2024 at 11:15 AM, Hackaro said:

well .. I moved to TrueNAS and Tunderbolt networking is working perfectly fine: 20gbps bi-directional with my Macs

Humm...I´ll take that into consideration...Core or Scale? How was is the change? Always heard True NAS is harder then Unraid...was that your experience? I´m no linux geek...

Edited August 29, 20241 yr by Botafoguense1965

1 hour ago, Botafoguense1965 said:

Always heard True NAS is harder then Unraid

 

That's because of poor design, as TN definitely doesn't offer anything you'll miss in Unraid.

8 minutes ago, Espressomatic said:

 

That's because of poor design, as TN definitely doesn't offer anything you'll miss in Unraid.

Humm, I see… the fear I have is not being  able to configure Thunderbolt in Unraid to direct connect my Mac…searching the forum and asking around I could get no definite answers about it…aside from that I’m comfortable with Unraid…

The price of formatting a USB thumb drive and some searching and testing is all you need   The beauty is there's little to nothing to set up from a software or hardware perspective if you just want to boot and check the identified hardware and install some drivers.

 

Edited August 29, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

3 hours ago, Espressomatic said:

The price of formatting a USB thumb drive and some searching and testing is all you need   The beauty is there's little to nothing to set up from a software or hardware perspective if you just want to boot and check the identified hardware and install some drivers.

 

Yeah, I’m in the process of doing it…in a couple of days I’ll know…I hope the TB card shows up…somewhere in the UI…  I’d hate to try doing on the CLI…rsrs

Edited August 30, 20241 yr by Botafoguense1965

@Marshalleq

Or anyone else for that matter.

I did a lot of research - albeit I've now discovered too much on chatGPT, and bought a Terramaster Thunderbolt 3 TDAS system to work on my ASRock B860I Lightning WiFi motherboard, supporting Thunderbolt 4 natively.

Unraid doesn't see drives from the off.

Below are two lines from:

dmesg

[ 14.057230] thunderbolt 0-1: new device found, vendor=0x1bf device=0x1

[ 14.057247] thunderbolt 0-1: TerraMaster Thunderbolt 3 TDAS

lspci | grep -i thunderbolt

00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #0 (rev 10)

00:07.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev 10)

00:0d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 USB Controller (rev 10)

00:0d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 NHI #0 (rev 10)

02:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

03:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

03:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

03:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

05:00.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

I don't see the drive using lsblk

When I run nano 99-local.rules on /etc/udev/rules.d/

and add

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="thunderbolt", ATTR{authorized}=="0", ATTR{authorized}="1"

sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/domain0/0-0

Authorized is 1

sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/domain0/0-0/0-1

Authorized is 0 (set to 1)

On a reboot, the above 99-local.rules and Authorized reset.

Any suggestions would be really helpful. My case won't support any more disks, this was supposed to be the best way around this issue

8 hours ago, elmuziko said:

@Marshalleq

Or anyone else for that matter.

I did a lot of research - albeit I've now discovered too much on chatGPT, and bought a Terramaster Thunderbolt 3 TDAS system to work on my ASRock B860I Lightning WiFi motherboard, supporting Thunderbolt 4 natively.

Unraid doesn't see drives from the off.

Below are two lines from:

dmesg

[ 14.057230] thunderbolt 0-1: new device found, vendor=0x1bf device=0x1

[ 14.057247] thunderbolt 0-1: TerraMaster Thunderbolt 3 TDAS

lspci | grep -i thunderbolt

00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #0 (rev 10)

00:07.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev 10)

00:0d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 USB Controller (rev 10)

00:0d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P Thunderbolt 4 NHI #0 (rev 10)

02:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

03:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

03:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

03:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

05:00.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge DD 2018] (rev 06)

I don't see the drive using lsblk

When I run nano 99-local.rules on /etc/udev/rules.d/

and add

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="thunderbolt", ATTR{authorized}=="0", ATTR{authorized}="1"

sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/domain0/0-0

Authorized is 1

sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/domain0/0-0/0-1

Authorized is 0 (set to 1)

On a reboot, the above 99-local.rules and Authorized reset.

Any suggestions would be really helpful. My case won't support any more disks, this was supposed to be the best way around this issue

Try putting the rule in /boot/config/udev/99-local.rules

Edit /boot/config/go and add this before any emhttp line:

#!/bin/bash

# Copy udev rule to system directory at boot

cp /boot/config/udev/99-local.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/

udevadm control --reload-rules

udevadm trigger --subsystem-match=thunderbolt

@maxandcheese

Thank you for the insanely fast response.
I have just noticed I've been blindy editing 99-persistent_unassigned.rules
There is no 99-local.rules in /etc/udev/rules.d

I created one with just:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="thunderbolt", ATTR{authorized}=="0", ATTR{authorized}="1"

I saved it in both /etc/udev/rules.d and /boot/config/udev/ before editing go.

Sadly, still nothing.

Other things I've done is plug the TerraMaster into a windows machine and changed the setup to JBOD.

I can't find anything in the BIOS about Thunderbolt security.
I have TPM enabled.

Edited June 27, 20251 yr by elmuziko

I was under the assumption you got the thunderbolt drive mounted manually and wanted to automate the process.

Have you tried echo 1 > /sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/0-*/authorized to get the device mounted. A reboot shouldn’t be required.

I've done some more digging and found the Terramaster D3 uses the HighPoint RocketRAID 2720 controller, which on further research doesn't play friendly with Unraid.

Sent the damn thing back.

Thank you all for being super quick on this one.