Problem Description:
Since this week, whenever I try to connect external monitors connected to a dock through the dock’s USB-C cable, either the screens are not detected, or the whole user interface freezes up. In the latter case, only a reboot makes the system usable again. If I boot my laptop with the dock connected, sometimes the whole system freezes before I get to the login screen. This was not the case before the weekend, when I was happily using the exact same setup
Relevant System Information:
System Details Report
The same problem occurs with different types of docks, I’ve tried the HP ThunderBolt G4 and the Dell WDS19S. In both cases the screens are connected to the dock through DisplayPort cables.
Screenshots or Error Messages:
I don’t know where to look for error messages, given that the whole system appears to freeze up.
What I’ve Tried:
I tried two different docks, and it’s exactly the same problem for both of them.
I’ve tried changing the driver for the GPU, from “NVIDIA driver (open kernel) metapackage from nvidia-driver-590-open (proprietary, tested)” to nvidia-driver-580-open and the problem persists. I then tried nouveau, which does not freeze, but also does not detect the external screens. Since switching to nouveau in the Additional Drivers tab of the Software and Updates screen, all the options are now greyed out, except a previously unavailable one that just says “Continue using a manually installed driver”. I did not manually install a driver.
I would love to try rolling back system updates, but I couldn’t find an obvious way to do this.
I do have two kernel versions installed currently, 6.17.0-6 and 6.17.0-8, and both give the same problem. 6.17.0-8 arrived about two months ago according to the timestamps in /boot.
I have the same issue, also since the past weekend, also when connecting an external monitor via USB, also on a Lenovo notebook. The rest of the details are different. No kernel Updates in the recent weeks. One update to linux-firmware, yesterday, but that was after the problem started.
(Edit: There was a Firmware update for this notebook to 1.0.21 last week, which might coincide when the problem started, but I’ve already tried to downgrade to 1.0.18 via `fwupdmgr downgrade` but it didn’t resolve the issue.)
System Information:
Operating System: Kubuntu 25.10
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.17.0
Qt Version: 6.9.2
Kernel Version: 6.17.0-8-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 14 × Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 125U
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15,1 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: Intel® Graphics
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 21M7CTO1WW
System Version: ThinkPad E14 Gen 6
I may have figured out the problem, at least for my system. I decided to try booting my computer with the dock attached and mashing Esc to get the kernel messages (please excuse me if I’m not using the correct names). With the dock attached it would hang on:
[FAILED] failed to start nvidia-peristenced.service
NVRM: API mismatch: the client nvidia-persiste (pid 2993) has the version
590.48.01, but this kernel module has the version 580.95.05. Please
make sure that this kernel module and all NVIDIA driver components
have the same version.
Then I went back to the Additional Drivers screen, which had all the options greyed out with only “Manually installed driver” as option, which was resolved by running:
sudo ubuntu-drivers install
Then I downgraded the NVIDIA driver to nvidia-driver-580-open and rebooted. There are no more kernel messages about API mismatches, the nvidia-persistenced.service is running. And I can connect the dock and the second screen is detected and used correctly without any freezes.
I mentioned in my original post that I had tried the same nvidia version 580 driver package, so I don’t know what made the difference now. Perhaps I failed to reboot the system to complete the changeover or something, I was admittedly not testing things in a systematic enough way. If anything changes, I will update the post.