Thunderbolt issues...

[travisphoto]

I have lost my Thunderbolt connectivity to my QNAP TVS-871T and the transfer speeds I am getting over the ethernet cable are painfully slow. I can't get the Thunderbolt connection to come back no matter what I do. I have replaced the cables, done unplugged-hard-restarts, tried troubleshooting suggestions about possible Mac OS problems from Apple forums. I have spent days on the QNAP forums and have resorted to submitting help ticket.

In the meantime, please advise.

[bokr71]

Hi Travis,

The Thunderbolt connection on the QNAP depends on a Thunderbolt bridge. You check this in QTS, and you could delete what is there, and then set it up again using QFinder Pro.

[travisphoto]

Thank you for your suggestions... doesn't want to let me delete existing bridge.

[bokr71]

No, you can’t delete the bruidge itself, but you can reset the settings, assign a new fixed IP, and assign your Thunderbolt interface to it. Then on your computer, set the Thunderbolt with another fixed IP in the same range, or use QFinder Pro to do it.

Another thing; if you do not see the Thunderbolt interfaces on your device list (and in the screenshot, it doesn’t look that way), try and restart your NAS, and disable the HD Station. I was told by QNAP that the current configuration of HD Station can create problems for Thunderbolt connections.

[travisphoto]

a follow-up:
I submitting a help request ticket and I was pleasantly surprised by the prompt same-day response. It was a bit confusing to set up the help session with the tech. I wasn't sure which email to respond to the tech but once we determined a time, but we did three days later and the Teamviewer session with the tech went OK with a major caveat. My tech seemed entirely competent and working hard to determine and solve my problem, but he failed to succeed however.
He eventually gave up thinking that it was going to be a hardware issue and said he would get back to me with a RMA procedure.
Seven days later, I got an email to try doing the "3 second reset" which fixed the problem and which begs the question of how did I miss this basic troubleshooting effort and why did he not try that to begin with?

[bokr71]

Excellent that they found out what was going on... It must have been a SW issue then... I had some issues with the Thunderbolt interface and the solution is that the HD Station is creating problems and need to be updated...

[chriscam]

same here.... thunderbolt not connecting at all after one day of great speeds.
took bobs advice and rebuilt all connections to 10gbe yesterday.

get the thing working ! we do need more connections on our TVS 1582TU

chris

[marbleDE]

I have the exact same issue with my QNAP TVS-672XT. It has two TB3 Connections and they both seem to die if I shut down / unplug the connected device (which is a MacBook Pro 2016 15" on the first TB3 port and a Dell XPS 15 running Windows 10 on the other TB3 port) and restart / connect it later. This happens from time when I want to work somewhere else and do not need the TB3 connection / NAS.

I am using TB3 ports because they are up to 4 times faster than 10GBit LAN. I bought the whole NAS to have this option, but since this error has been existing since 2018, I guess QNAP is not able to fix this issue. I invested a lot of money into the NAS and like it a lot. This is the only issue I've had since I got it 6 months ago. It would be good to solve this issue because restarting the NAS takes around 10 minutes. Running FW 4.4.3.1354.

[bokr71]

The issue completely disappeared via FW updates, of rme at least.

A work-around was connecting one of my TB ports to a docking station, which I left powered on all the time. I didn’t use it, but there was a “connection” between the NAS and the docking station at all times.

[player1tv]

i just received my TVS-1282T3 and could not get thunderbolt to work with 2 different macs. I rebooted the NAS and thunderbolt appeared, but then started another 12hr storage pool sync. Current firmware is the latest 4.4.3.1354

I also tried to connect the second mac once the 1st was visible, it never detected it.

For $11grand I hope this is not an ongoing issue.

[bokr71]

Early on there was an issue with Thunderbolt port on the QNAP shutting down if they were unused, and it took a reboot to get them back. This was fixed by FW though.

[Yop1403]

Just stumbling over this. Have had exactly the same issues with a QNAP TVS 672XT Thunderbolt connection over my Caldigit TS3+ Dock to my Macbook Pro.
Have actually purchased my TS3+ dock to REDUCE direct connections to my Macbook (the idea was to need only 1 connection) - after experiencing the same issues as mentioned by several (TS3+ remains powered on, TS3+ doesn't detect QNAP TB3 connection) I have contacted Caldigit support and they confirmed to me that a QNAP TB3 connection is not compatible with the dock as the connection is not a regular TB3 connection but an IP over TB3 connection.
Not ideal for me as I'm now connecting the TS3+ dock and the QNAP TB3 connector to my Macbook (2 connections rather than 1 as desired) but still better than always connecting a gozillion of devices.
I have to add that the QNAP TB3 connection (was also stated by someone) is somewhat instable. Most times it works, when accessing multiple drives on the NAS TB3 connectivity is just dropped (e.g. when the computer goes to standby, etc.) and the NAS TB3 connection needs to be unplugged/re-connected to work again.
If I had to rely on such a connection for business I would definitely use 10 GBoE and not TB3!

[Magnetize]

I have finally found a workaround to this issue when my iMac 2017 27" wakes up from sleep and is unable to connect to my QNAP (TVS-872XT) via Thunderbolt 3. The workaround solution is to SSH into your QNAP device as an admin. Then run the commands below to stop your Thunderbolt service, wait a few seconds, and then start the Thunderbolt service back up again. There is a restart option as well, but it does not work reliably because I don't believe it waits long enough between stop and start. Nevertheless, after I run the commands below my iMac is able to reconnect to QNAP via Thunderbolt successfully 100% of the time.

> ../etc/init.d/thunderbolt.sh stop
[Wait a few seconds]
> ../etc/init.d/thunderbolt.sh start

As a next step, I plan to have a script that runs on my iMac upon wake-up and if it doesn't see my QNAP via Thunderbolt, to then automatically SSH into QNAP and run commands as outlined. Will try to get this in place when I have some time. In the meantime, if someone is able to pull this together, please let me know!

Hope this helps! Glad I was able to solve this for myself and hope it helps everyone else too!

[Magnetize]

BTW, I have finally found a way to automate the entire process. So now every time I wake my iMac from sleep, it will automatically check my connection to QNAP via Thunderbolt. If its not connected, it will stop and start the Thunderbolt interface on QNAP and then re-establish the connection. All completely automated. If anyone is interested, I can do a quick write-up and post back.

[robert_m_muench]

If anyone is interested, I can do a quick write-up and post back.

Hi, that would be great. I'm thinking about doing it with Hammerspoon. But let's see your solution.

I now see a terminal menu when logging into my QNAP, which I first have to quit. Will that make any problems from a script?