Tinkering with Thunderbolt

[DenisInternet]

Hello!

Let me preface this by saying, I am very much a newbie/rookie when it comes to TrueNAS, or NAS's in general. So if my "eating-crayons" experiment doesn't make any sense, or re-inventing the wheel, my bad. I just stumbled on something I thought was interesting, and was curious to see if it actually is something worth tinkering with further, or if I should just move on.

I've been messing around with TrueNAS CORE and SCALE, on a dummy/spare system to familiarize myself with the software before building a proper NAS.
I watched some YouTube tutorials on TrueNAS, and was able to successfully create a basic Pool, windows VM, and an SMB share. Overall I am loving the UI!

But then I got distracted/curious about something that I didn't expect to see/work, my motherboards Thunderbolt ports. When I was messing around with the "Configure Network Interfaces" on TrueNAS CORE, I noticed it detected my motherboards Thunderbolt ports but that was pretty much it, I couldn't see it anywhere in the GUI. But after switching over to TrueNAS SCALE for some VM stuff I was testing, the Thunderbolt ports were not only detected, but displayed in the GUI and detected by my "Thunderbolt Bridge" on my Mac system.

So, I thought, maybe I could somehow manually assign an IP for the Thunderbolt Bridge and point the SMB share towards it, and connect via Thunderbolt? So far no luck.

Thanks!

 

[sretalla]

I'll preface my response with "I don't actually expect any of this to work".

I can see a few problems with what you shared...

You don't have a media type for the Thunderbolt interface (maybe that matters, maybe not).

The IP address assigned is an automatic one which won't be routable or sane to other computers trying to reach it unless they also have an address in the 169... range. (certainly worth trying to change it manually to something that you can work with like 192.168.x.y, but not the same subnet as your primary NIC... how are you connecting the MAC?... all thunderbolt systems have a Thunderbolt bridge, so I doubt that you are actually "detecting" the Mac from TrueNAS)

A TrueNAS Server (as far as I am aware) is not set up to perform the duties of a WINS server. (I don't see the value of specifying it as one on the Mac).

 

[Beatlejuice]

Hey, any updates on this? I'm really curious if you made it work.
Linux kernel doc quotes, there should be Thunderbolt networking: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.19/admin-guide/thunderbolt.html#networking-over-thunderbolt-cable
But: https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/thunderbolt-wireless-networking.98908/ - Edit: My best guess is, it's not working due to the newer TB4 Chip not being supported yet.
But then this dude: /watch?v=WZD2QaeB53M
I'm confused.
Also found this source, which might help: https://chrisbergeron.com/2021/07/25/ultra-fast-thunderbolt-nas-with-apple-m1-and-linux/
From all sources I found out yet, if Thunderbolt networking works, it's limited to 20Gbit/s. Also Titan Ridge TB-Chips seems to have better compatibility.

 

[DenisInternet]

Hey, any updates on this? I'm really curious if you made it work.
Linux kernel doc quotes, there should be Thunderbolt networking: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.19/admin-guide/thunderbolt.html#networking-over-thunderbolt-cable
But: https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/thunderbolt-wireless-networking.98908/ - Edit: My best guess is, it's not working due to the newer TB4 Chip not being supported yet.
But then this dude: /watch?v=WZD2QaeB53M
I'm confused.
Also found this source, which might help: https://chrisbergeron.com/2021/07/25/ultra-fast-thunderbolt-nas-with-apple-m1-and-linux/
From all sources I found out yet, if Thunderbolt networking works, it's limited to 20Gbit/s. Also Titan Ridge TB-Chips seems to have better compatibility.

Oh wow, interesting stuff! I am going to dig into this, when I have some time. I suppose if I made Linux box this would be easier to follow, not sure if it even makes sense to attempt with TrueNAS as my knowledge on all of this is very limited.