Gigabyte WRX80-SU8-IPMI experience

[jeverett]

@Bumperdoo

you’ll likely be told to take a hike

@jeverett

I’ll probably test out that USB 2.0 motherboard port that the GC-TITIAN RIDGE plugs into, just to confirm it work.

Well, tested out the motherboard USB 2.0 header – connected a front panel dock to it, and hooked up a mouse end keyboard. Works fine:

@jeverett

… I ordered the following new Thunderbolt 3 gear to test:
Sonnet Echo Express SE IIIe (3-Slot PCIe Card Expansion Chassis)
TEKQ Cube Thunderbolt 3 SSD Enclosure
…

Tried two different newer Thunderbolt 3 peripherals – same behavior.

Peripheral shows up, is authorized, and shows connected on the WRX80-SU8-IPMI/GC-TITAN-RIDGE:

…but the peripherals hardware components don’t show up on the system:

Meanwhile, the same gear attached to my old Alpine Ridge Asus system is pretty much plug-and-play, with everything showing and working:

@jeverett

Maybe I’ll try de-authorizing the non-working gear and try “No Security” mode, and maybe reauthorizing under “User Authentication” mode.

Any other extra BIOS tweaks anyone might suggest that sound relevant to this problem?
PBS | TR HR FPB Capability
PBS |Thunderbolt Security Level
PBS |Thunderbolt Force PWR
PBS |Thunderbolt Assign Resource
PBS |Thunderbolt MMIO Resource
PBS | Legacy/Native
PBS |Thunderbolt L1SS Support
PBS |Thunderbolt Wake Up Command

Anyone have any any ideas for next steps in troubleshooting, or setting changes? Or, does it seem like I’m at the RMA stage now? If RMA, any guesses what might be the problem: the WRX80-SU8-IPMI or the GC-TITAN-RIDGE?

Thanks for any input!

[jeverett]

@jeverett

Anyone have any any ideas for next steps in troubleshooting, or setting changes? Or, does it seem like I’m at the RMA stage now? If RMA, any guesses what might be the problem: the WRX80-SU8-IPMI or the GC-TITAN-RIDGE?

Well, similar experience in Ubuntu 21.04.

Attached Thunderbolt peripherals can be attached and authorized. They show up, but their underlying hardware isn’t functional.

Any tests to try, or settings to experiment with, would be welcome. I have tickets in with Gigabyte, Sonnet, and Akitio, in the meantime.

Here’s what things look like in Linux:

[jeverett]

@jeverett

Peripheral shows up, is authorized, and shows connected on the WRX80-SU8-IPMI/GC-TITAN-RIDGE:

…but the peripherals hardware components don’t show up on the system:

Well, finally got this working, basically the symptoms were as above the Thunderbolt AIC was recognized, the Thunderbolt peripherals were attached and approved, but no attached Thunderbolt hardware was working. After experimenting and making sure all connections were good, reflashing/configuring the BIOS, making sure all Thunderbolt drivers were successfully installed and loaded, and finally, reflashing the Thunderbolt card firmware, I noticed that the best I’d get was after a “Detect new hardware” in Device Manager, I’d see the hardware I was expecting with an “Code 31 – …Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device.” Googling around a bit, I found that was often when a Thunderbolt AIC was in the wrong slot (typically when the install instructions gave no guidance.)

So, I tried the x16 Slot 1 instead of the x8 Slot 2 – and bingo, I started to see hardware devices in Device Manager:

… after some driver updates/installs, I resolved all the errors in Device Manager, hooked up more Thunderbolt peripherals, and Thunderbolt connectivity is all as expected:

So, some lessons learned here:

1. the ASPEED VGA didn’t need to be disabled
2. Secure Boot was irrelevant to Thunderbolt working
3. the x8 SLOT 2 might not be the winning slot – x16 SLOT 1 (in plain old x16 mode) worked for me, and there might be some various resource complexities that make one slot work over another.

[wendell]

Good work thanks for documenting.
It might be the x8 slot is on the same root complex as the ipmi interface and that’s why it’s a bit odd

[jeverett]

@wendell

might be the x8 slot is on the same root complex as the ipmi interface

I started to map out what resources I saw where. This is what I looks like with the Thunderbolt AIC in Slot 1:

I think in Slot 2, it was lumped in with all the other resources in the last bus.