TB15 Dock Linux Support

I do not have a contact at Dell. It's been a while since I called. Dell didn't technically issue a refund, but they assured me that Amazon would honor it being that Amazon is a partner of Dell.

Amazon didn't give me any grief. Although if they had, Dell instructed me to contact them again.

If you are having a difficult time with support at either Dell or B&H, I'd keep calling and escalate to a supervisor or manager if needed.

When I tried to return my two TB15 docks to Dell I was told in order to return them I had to open up a technical service request case and have it trouble shot with one of the technicians before they would allow a return. I opened up the case and the technical person I worked with asked about the OS (Ubuntu 16.04) and stated it was a known problem and it would not work.

This allowed an RMA to be authorized and both units were returned. I received a full refund via credit card credit within a week.

That's close to my experience although I'm on a different kernel.

After writing tha the sound did not work a few posts ago, I did find that the sound can work but there issues with configuration at the pulse audio levels vs the alsa level.

Sound plays when you can specify a specific device such as "aplay -t hw:1,1 /usr/sound.../somesoundfile.wav. The 1,1 came from the card and device number (aplay list or something like that). It appears that there is another USB sound output "thing" at hw1,0 which seems to grab pulse audio's attention. I do not know enough to know how to manually configure this but it appears to be a pure linux os automatic configuration issue. I tried fiddling its PA's module loader but could not get it quite right.

Intel's sound card appears at card 0 with several devices, then there are 2 usb sound devices at card 1, the second of which is the TB15 sound "card".

If any alsa/pulse audio experts can help with this that would be great.

Another update on my system consisting of a Dell XPS 9350, a TB15 and an external monitor:

o Using the TB15 network interface, sshfs is not possible, the mount point gets empty after a short time. Typing "dmesg" on a reasonable fast remote computer also interrupts the ssh connection. The network interface stays up, though. The wireless card works normally with the exact same configuration and tests. Strange.

o After unplugging the TB15 and plugging it in again, the external screen stayed dark. I could not reactivate the external screen.

One thing to note, on Arch Linux "applying software updates" IS actually compiling. The ebuilds that Pacman uses are source packages with sane defaults, so it does end up compiling on your machine with any patches specified in the ebuild package.

What kind of poor battery life were you seeing with Arch, 4 hours or so or worse than that?

On Arch, you're only compiling the source if you are installing a source package from AUR, and maybe not then.  Otherwise, it's generally (always?) installing a pre-built binary.  FWIW.  I don't think the kernel from testing is compiling itself.

On Arch, I'm pretty easily seeing 5+ hours of battery life on my 5510.

Regarding the screen flickering; there have been many gen9 (Skylake and above) fixes in the 4.9 kernel series and internal/external display handling is much more stable in the latest rc. I haven't experienced any flickering or display corruption since 4.9-rc5.

It sounds like you have the "economy" model E-Port dock. If you have the E-Port Plus it supports 2x DVI or DP ports plus VGA. I believe the DP ports on the USB3 enabled E-Port Plus model are at least DP 1.2 so should support 4k @ 30Hz for both, and probably 4K @ 60Hz on one, though I can't remember if I saw that on a spec sheet or not.

The Dell guys already explained pretty well, but there are definitely a LOT of moving parts with regards to USB-C/Thunderbolt 3. See the explanation by a company that pretty much ONLY does USB accessories about the challenges they've faced, and the new Macbook Pro 2016 throwing a wrench in the works.

plugable.com/thunderbolt-3

It sounds like you got the 12 kWh Power Companion with USB-C. You are correct that it only provides 45W out, and that may not be enough to power your laptop while it is running. Try turning off or sleeping your laptop and plugging in the USB-C, and then click the "battery check" button on the Power Companion and see if your laptop's charging light illuminates.

I have a Precision 7510 that will operate from the 18 kWh Power Companion (65W output) via USB-C cable (cribbed from a 12 kWh model) or the 7mm plug, but it will only charge from the (underpowered) 12 kWh Power Companion if the laptop is sleeping/hibernating/off, it won't start drawing power if it is running.

Thank you for the accuracy correction, it's been a while since I enjoyed Arch full time and I'd forgotten that distinction.  It's good to know that 5+ hours is achievable. I'm curious what I'll be able to accomplish on my 7510. It's a bit more of a hog with Ubuntu on there, and I haven't discovered nearly enough power saving tricks yet.

Any improvements with the latest BIOS 01.02.16 (Dec 1st 2016)?

My setup: A Dell XPS 13 9350 and a TB15

I will test during the weekend. I installed a new bios, a new thunderbolt firmware, a new firmware on the TB15 and it looks as if I also had to update to the current vanilla kernel 4.8.12 to get "everything" working again.

First benefit: My Logitech 1000Hz USB receiver seems to work now with the dock.

The problem with sshfs still persists: Doing a "ls -R" cuts off the mountpoint (it get's empty like it was never mounted) after a view lines of output. The ethernet connection stays up and persists working.

I would be grateful if someone could post a step-by-step recipe to get my XPS13 9350 to work with my TB15 dock please. I have been trying to follow this forum but I get confused with the number of tweaks that seem to be needed. Experience so far: can run screen (HDMI); no network; no USB.

I am currently running ubuntu 16.04LTS with a 4.8.6 kernel. I have also upgraded BIOS to latest version 1.4.10.

Thanks