[SOLVED] Proxmox 9.0 on 2018 Mac Mini with OWC miniStack STX thunderbolt external storage hub.

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woland

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Aug 22, 2025
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The OWC miniStack STX contains one 4TB NVMe SSD and one 256GB SATA SSD. If I connect the thunderbolt cable from the STX to a USB3-A type output on the Mac Mini via an adapter, only the 256GB SATA disk is visible to PVE. And so is also the case if I boot up the Mini using Linux Mint 22.1 install. In both cases I use lsblk command. This is in accordance with documentation from OWC.
However, if I use the thunderbolt interface on the Mini, none of the disks are visible to neither PVE nor Mint. If I boot up the Mini using MacOS Sequoia, both disks in the OWC enclosure are available.
If I connect the OWC device to an Intel NUC13ANHi5 running Debian-12 using thunderbolt, both disks are available.

From this I conclude that linux does not support thunderbolt 4 on older (2018) Mac devices. However, I have run 'apt install bolt polkitd pkexec', and issuing the commands
- $ boltctl list
- $ dmesg | grep thunderbolt
- $ journalctl -u bolt
all indicate that the OWC miniStack STX has been recognized, but none of the disks are listed.

Have I missed something? Is there a simple fix available?
 
Thanks for sharing your experience and pointing out the "boltctl authorize" command. I have a similar problem with a Mac Mini server 2018, but with the OWC Envoy Pro FX SSDs. I have used both the "boltctl authorize" and "boltctl enroll" commands after installing the "bolt" and "thunderbolt-tools" packages. Everything appears to be working as expected with Proxmox 9.0 with all updates applied. Here is the output from running the enroll command:

Code: 
# boltctl enroll --policy auto 'c3030000-[redacted]'
 ● Other World Computing Envoy Pro FX
   ├─ type:          peripheral
   ├─ name:          Envoy Pro FX
   ├─ vendor:        Other World Computing
   ├─ uuid:          c3030000-[redated]
   ├─ dbus path:     /org/freedesktop/bolt/devices/c3030000_[redacted]
   ├─ generation:    Thunderbolt 3
   ├─ status:        authorized
   │  ├─ domain:     c2010000-[redacted]
   │  ├─ parent:     c2010000-[redated, same as above]
   │  ├─ syspath:    /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/0000:04:00.0/0000:05:00.0/0000:06:00.0/domain0/0-0/0-1
   │  ├─ rx speed:   40 Gb/s = 2 lanes * 20 Gb/s
   │  ├─ tx speed:   40 Gb/s = 2 lanes * 20 Gb/s
   │  └─ authflags:  none
   ├─ authorized:    Mon 15 Sep 2025 05:10:27 PM UTC
   ├─ connected:     Mon 15 Sep 2025 04:33:38 PM UTC
   └─ stored:        Mon 15 Sep 2025 05:10:27 PM UTC
      ├─ policy:     auto
      └─ key:        no

Note that by using "enroll," the authorization survives reboots. Examination of "dmesg" and "journal -u bolt" messages show that everything seems to be working as expected. However, I have not been able to get the system to recognize the Envoy SSD as a storage device, and hence, I can't mount it. It feels like I'm missing an important step, but it's eluding me.

Suggestions for how to resolve this problem would be much appreciated.
 
Have you tried formatting the SSD to either LVM or EXT4 before connecting it to the PVE? I booted my Mac Mini 2018 into Linux Mint and used Gparted for this purpose.
 
I finally figured out what was causing my problems with Thunderbolt SSDs not being available as mountable devices, despite being enrolled via 'boltctl' (see my prior reply). Apparently, the PCI bus is not being scanned properly on bootup or when Thunderbolt connection events occur. This ArchWiki Thunderbolt article provided the clue under the "Troubleshooting" section along with instructions on how to correct this problem permanently.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Thunderbolt

As a quick fix, this command:

Code: 
# echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan

...registers my OWC Envoy Pro FX SSDs allowing them to show up correctly as nvme devices (e.g., nvme1n1). Note that this will only register Thunderbolt devices that have been enrolled using boltctl.
 
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