Fixing USB-C/Thunderbolt dock on a ThinkPad T490

[bastnic]

Not sure how to share that information, but I was stuck and maybe someone will search for it in issues. Maybe it can be documented in the manual?

Symptom: when I plugged my USB-C/Thunderbolt dock into the T490 (Intel), only the external display worked. Keyboard and mouse didn’t.
Cause: Thunderbolt security blocked the dock’s USB hub until I explicitly authorized it.

Steps I took

1. Installed and started the Thunderbolt authorization daemon (bolt).

sudo pacman -S --needed bolt
sudo systemctl enable --now bolt

2. Plugged the dock into the T490’s Thunderbolt port

3. Listed Thunderbolt devices and grabbed the dock’s UUID.

The dock shows as connected.

boltctl list

4. Enrolled the dock so it’s trusted persistently.
   (That was the key step that fixed everything.)

sudo boltctl enroll <UUID>

5. Replugged the dock and verified that keyboard/mouse enumerated.

How I verified it worked

The Keyboard and mouse work \o/.

• The dock shows as authorized:

boltctl list
boltctl info <UUID>

• USB devices appear behind xHCI:

lsusb -t

• No Thunderbolt authorization errors:

journalctl -u bolt -b

[sailoz]

There is a PR #708 to install bolt and gvfs-smb.