Fixing a Thunderbolt dock/display issue on Dell XPS 1300 in Ubuntu by unlocking Thunderbird
I came into work this morning after taking a week off.
I plugged my notebook into my docking station as usual, but couldn’t get the screens or wired internet to work. When I went to Settings > Display only the built in display was showing rather than the three I have attached to my docking station. I could turn the computer on and off using the button on my docking station.
I did the usual things when the docking station doesn’t work exactly as it should:
- Restart the computer
- Cold boot the computer (i.e. power down, wait thirty seconds, then power back up)
- turn off and on each of the screens
- Reset the docking station:
- turn off the computer (don’t know if this is necessary)
- unplug the station at both ends (i.e. from the mains and from the computer),
- hold the power button on the docking station for about 45 seconds, then release
- plug the docking station back into the wall and the computer
- restart the computer
- Unplug and replug the internet cable
- Unplug and replug the screens
- Try putting the Thunderbolt cable in a different USB-C slot
Nothing worked.
Then I accidentally clicked on “Thunderbolt” on my “Settings” dialogue. The dialogue looked like the image below, except that everything was greyed out.
Not quite sure what to do about this, I tried a couple of things:
- I clicked on the “Devices”: this then provided another dialogue that asked me if I wanted to forget this device; that seemed a little extreme at the moment so I cancelled the action;
- I clicked on the “Unlock” button (it’s a bit hard to see, but it’s up in the menu bar right beside the buttons to collapse, shrink, and minimize the dialogue in the top right): I was asked for my password and then after I did that, things seemed to work. I can’t remember if I had to reboot, plug and unplug, or anything like that.
I wonder if perhaps there’s a time out that requires reauthorisation if you haven’t used a Thunderbird device for a certain amount of time. I have been as long as this away from my docking station in the past (about 10 days), but this was the first time this ever happened.
