Passthrough Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt 2 controller?

[proxwolfe]

Hi,

Does Proxmox 6 support Thunderbolt 2?

I have a Thunderbolt 2 card installed in my Thinkstation P700 and lspci shows a number of Thundertbolt 2 Bridges and a Thunderbolt 2 NHI.

Neither my Thunderbolt 2 Dock nor any devices in it (e.g. NIC, USB3) are listed.

And Proxmox does not offer me to pass through the controller to a VM.

Is this expected behaviour? How can I make this work?

Thanks

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,

I guess the Thunderbolt conroller is not in an isolated iommu.
Fore passthrough you must pass the hole iommu group to the VM.
Also, ensure that all preconditions for PCIe passthrough are given.
see https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Pci_passthrough

 

[proxwolfe]

Thanks for your help!

I have successfully passed through various other PCI devices. So IOMMU isolation and passing through in general work.

It is (only?) the Thunderbolt controller/bridges that don't show up. I checked the IOMMU groups and the Thunderbolt devices are in separate groups but none are listed as available for passthrough.

I should note that dmesgd during boot shows these two lines:

[ 37.056199] thunderbolt 0000:0b:00.0: failed to send driver ready to ICM​

[ 37.057082] thunderbolt: probe of 0000:0b:00.0 failed with error -110​

This relates to 0b:00.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 NHI [Falcon Ridge 4C 2013]

So something may be wrong with the controller that causes the pass through problem?

Any ideas whether this is linked and if so, what causes this?

Thanks!

 

[proxwolfe]

So I resolved this.

The issue probably was related to the dmesg error message. By playing around in the BIOS of my host, I managed to resolve the error.

Now I still don't see the Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt controller but I do see devices attached to the Thunderbolt port and I can pass these devices individually to my VM.

Thanks again for your support!

 

[soupdiver]

So I resolved this.

The issue probably was related to the dmesg error message. By playing around in the BIOS of my host, I managed to resolve the error.

Now I still don't see the Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt controller but I do see devices attached to the Thunderbolt port and I can pass these devices individually to my VM.

Thanks again for your support!

What were the settings in the bios you have adjusted? I think I have a similar scenario. I can see the controller but no device connected to it

 

[proxwolfe]

Sorry mate, too long ago to remember and even back then I don't think I knew exactly which of the settings made the difference.

 

[soupdiver]

Sorry mate, too long ago to remember and even back then I don't think I knew exactly which of the settings made the difference.

heeh no worries
But did you succeed in the end to passthrough the whole Thunderbolt Controller? Or each device separately that is connected via Thunderbolt?
By any chance, did you also try to do video over TB?

 

[proxwolfe]

I never managed to pass through the entire controller but I am still passing through the individual devices (they are all in the same iommu group, so I am passing them all through to the same VM).

I don' t think I ever tried passing through a graphics card, but I don't see why it should not work (all (non-graphics) cards I have tried have passed through without any issues).

As this particular PC only has TB2, this would probably severely limit throughput/performance, so I am passing through graphics cards that are plugged in a PCIe slot directly.

 

[soupdiver]

> I don' t think I ever tried passing through a graphics card, but I don't see why it should not work (all (non-graphics) cards I have tried have passed through without any issues).

I already successfully passed through the grpahics card to my VM. What I want to achieve is to also passthrough the TB controller so I can use TB for things like mouse, keyboard but also video output from the VM. Basically giving me all the connectivity with just one cable and device passed through.
But especuially the video part seems... unexplored. Still tinkering and can't find much about this online.
Thanks for your info anyway