I have filed two bugs on Launchpad against X:

• Display freezes: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/1876533
• Dock issues: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/1876534

Thanks @ CitadelCore for all the details
 

I'll follow up with our team too - afraid I don't have a P72 to try with myself. 

Mark

Hi

I have a similar problem. 

X1 Extreme gen 1 and Thunderbolt 3 Workstation dock.

The dock has been running three monitors for a year now, with the occasional event that I had to un-power the dock wait 20 sec and re-power it to get three monitors running. This was on Fedora 31.

Two days ago I installed Fedora 32 on another partition and updated everything. Now both fedora 31 and 32 can only use one of my two external displays connected to the dock.

I tried downgrading the firmware.

I tried the Nvidia drivers.

I tried updating the bios, the thunderbolt firmware etc.

I cannot get both displays working. Anyone have a similar issue?

Hi again

I was wondering if anyone who has this working, could let me know:

Dock firmware version

thunderbolt firmware version

nvidia driver version (though I do not believe this is the problem as I have tried several)

Anything else important

I'm also suffering somewhat to get this dock to work adequately on Linux (Running Debian Testing, kernel 5.6)

For those of you with an X1 Extreme or X1 Extreme Gen2, please remember that any display different from the Internal one is always handled by the GPU, so, hybrid configurations with this dock will not work for multiple screens on Linux, unless you wait for NVIDIA to update drivers past the 450.0 one (which is in beta and currently not available for any other distro than Ubuntu 18, it is also not listed on nvidia drivers downloads, so be aware)

The only way to adequately activate any external monitor (with linux) is to put the video as dedicated only until the new NVIDIA driver comes out. (talking about >440.82), windows drivers take care of handling hybrid configurations, but, this also has some glitches from time to time, so using windows is no holy grail either.

The thing that works best for me is to simply unplug and plug the dock again after logging in, RandR get's all crazy trying to figure out screen disposition,  and tries to set crazy refresh rates so any external monitors stay off, or produce drawing artifacts.

Hopefully Lenovo can improve monitor handling, As displayport timings are extremely buggy and as they surely now, Xorg way of handling monitor detection is surely more thorought than windows, so this polling takes time. (of course, writing custom monitor sections on xorg.conf is out of the question as this is not portable)

The other glitch that was readily observed is that the dock is not properly managed as a "dock" so acpid enabled distros most surely will suspend the machine whenever the lid is closed (even with external monitors, so, a quick logind.conf fix is due while this happens.

HTH

I was tinkering a little with this, and i found a workable Xorg configuration under hybrid mode for the Thinkpad X1 Extreme 2nd gen, (note that hybrid mode will cause the machine to not show the boot logo/screens if the laptop lid is closed and you power up using the dock)

/etc/X11/xorg.conf (alternatively: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-tb3-dock-multidisplay.conf)

Section "ServerLayout"

   Identifier "layout"

   Screen 0 "nvidia"

   Inactive "intel"

EndSection

Section "Device"

   Identifier "nvidia"

   Driver "nvidia"

   BusID  "PCI:1:0:0"

EndSection

# Fill up any monitor details here.

Section "Monitor"

EndSection

Section "Monitor"

EndSection

Section "Screen"

   Identifier "nvidia"

   Device "nvidia"

   Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"

EndSection

Section "Device"

   Identifier "intel"

   Driver "modesetting"

   BusID  "PCI:0:2:0"

EndSection

Section "Screen"

   Identifier "intel"

   Device "intel"

EndSection

Even with this configuration you'll have to be aware that the nvidia card will be used exclusively by Xorg, so, if you unplug the laptop from the dock, you´ll be using the dedicated GPU, and thus, battery life will be hindered. 

I've noticed that with kernel 5.7 the dock resposiveness was greatly improved, still, xrandr speed with dynamic configurations (as in, no explicit monitor configs defined on Xorg) has some delays with DP 1.4 displays. (but this is most surely derived on how the nvidia driver interfaces with the dock over TB3 to drive the displays)

It would be useful to have the machine properly boot up to the external displays on hybrid mode with the lid closed, i'm unsure if this also needs a BIOS update to the machine itself rather than the dock. Just saying, as some of us purchased this dock to have the machine docked over long periods. 

A useful advice, for those using Linux and gdm is that you could copy over your $HOME/.config/monitors.xml file to /var/lib/gdm3/.config (taking care of setting appropiate permissions) so the machine boots up to gdm with your preferred display arrangement always. 

HTH,

Folks, whatever you do, don't upgrade to the latest 3.1.67 if you're using more than one external display.

OTOH, upgrading to 3.1.67 totally crippled my 144hz displays so with that firmware version, external displays that support that resolution become unusable at refresh rates higher than 60hz.

This happens for both linux and windows. This happens regardless of the DisplayMode setting on the BIOS for hybrid or dedicated.

@MarkRHPearson Please take note of this situation, i had to revert to 3.1.66 because i lost my two displays at this refresh rate (they're connected via DP)

Hi @roliverio - Noted. I actually got hold of a dock myself so will play with it and my P1G2  - though I only have two quite old monitors (@60Hz) so not sure if I'll find much

My understanding is you need discrete mode and the nvidia drivers. I believe Nvidia have just released a new driver which I know improves power consumption....don't know if it will help with the monitors though.

I'm heading off for a week of PTO - I'll see if someone else on the team can have a look but if not send me a nudge in a weeks time and I'll follow up. Our test team have been putting the dock through it's paces and they found a few issues but I don't know if they tested 144Hz monitors (or three monitors like RGG). 

If you're seeing the problem with Windows try following up on the accesories forum - the dock team have a lot more experience supporting Windows. If it's a firmware issue we might get a faster solution ;)

Mark

Hi @MarkRHPearson 

Thanks for your quick reply, i'll wait for your return, but, i cannot do a lot of testing as the dock is on my X1extG2 and it is my work machine and, as such, i have little chance of experimenting with it.

I've reasons to suspect that the new Nvidia driver (at least on linux) wouldn't make a difference with the dock on 3.1.67 as on windows i'm on latest drivers and the problem is present there too.

HTH,

Just as a data point I am running the same dock with a P50 and 2 external Lenovo HD displays under 20.04 and Windows 10 and everything works.  I'm using the proprietary nvidia-driver-435 (my graphics card is a M2000M with 4 GB) and I am using nvidia mode, not hybrid.  The dock firmware is trdockfw3167 (just burned it yesterday).  Not sure what Thunderbolt driver I have, but it's whatever 20.04 provides.  Both monitors are connected to the dock by HDMI.  

When I first fired it up only one monitor worked, and the display was mirrored from the laptop display.  I futzed with the display settings a bit (selecting primary display, mirroring on and off, etc.) and was able to get all 3 monitors (2 external plus built-in working.

One difference is that my dock did not come with the 2 power bricks, but one 230 Watt brick and a splitter cable that connects it to the 65 and 170 Watt inputs.

Interestingly the USB ports don't always work.  It seems I need to boot into Windows, then boot into Ubuntu without powering off or resetting the dock or they don't work.  But even when the USB ports are non-functional the monitors still work.  I guess that's because they are just pass-through.