Re: Hotplug not working for USB 3.1 docking station on Dell XPS 13

From: Richard van der Hoff
Date: Thu Aug 25 2016 - 09:01:11 EST


On 24/08/16 21:15, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
[+cc Andreas, linux-kernel]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 05:40:53PM +0100, Richard van der Hoff wrote:
I'm having problems with a Plugable USB-C docking station, with my
laptop, a Dell XPS 13 (9350). ...
My impression, and feedback from the linux-usb mailing list, is
therefore that this is a PCI hotplug problem.

Please include a pointer to the linux-usb analysis.

For the record, here: http://marc.info/?l=linux-usb&m=147204147226274&w=2, however:

From the kernel's point of view, plugging in the dock would be a PCIe
hotplug event on 00:1c.0 that should be handled by pciehp. Do you
have pciehp included in your kernel?

I did not; now I do, and it works perfectly. Thank you! A case of it being incredibly obvious once you know what you are looking for.

01:00.0 and 02:02.0 are ports of a Thunderbolt switch. Since they
don't appear when you boot without the docking station, the dock
connection must be between 00:1c.0 and 01:00.0.

This would strike me as surprising - the dock bills itself as a USB-C device, and the Thunderbolt devices look like they are part of the laptop chipset to me. To me it seems more likely that those PCI devices are part of the laptop, but are powered down until something is plugged into the USB-C port.

Still, this is splitting hairs; the point is that they are hotplugged PCI devices which need pciehp.

Thanks again for the pointer.

Best regards

Richard