Thunderbolt won't wake from sleep on Mac Mini Server w/Lion 10.7.1

I'm having a similar problem with MBA+thunderbolt. I will try the no auto-adjust brightness solution.

I was wondering if maybe the update didn't take on my system. I'm running rEFit because I wanted to see how Ubuntu works on the MBA (not perfect, doesn't support Thunderbolt at all, probably need to give it another six months). Anyway, here's my firmware info. Does anyone see something different after the update?

MacBook Air:

Vendor Name: Apple, Inc.

Device Name: MacBook Air

UID: 0x0001000C10DFEF20

Firmware Version: 8.1

Port:

Status: Connected

Link Status: 2

Port Micro Firmware Version: 2.1.0

Cable Micro Firmware Version: 0.1.18

Thunderbolt Display:

Vendor Name: Apple, Inc.

Device Name: Thunderbolt Display

Vendor ID: 0x1

Device ID: 0x8002

Device Revision: 0x1

UID: 0x0001000100111830

Firmware Version: 22.2

Port:

Status: Connected

Link Status: 2

Port Micro Firmware Version: 0.0.21

Cable Micro Firmware Version: 0.1.18

Port:

Status: No devices connected

Link Status: 7

Super Port Micro Firmware Version: 0.0.21

It's also still an issue with a dual non-apple monitor setup. The HDMI port wakes to a keyboard press but the thunderbolt port doesn't.

Note I'm using a thunderbolt to displayport cable which may be part of the issue. But I think its the fact that its a non-apple/non-thunderbolt monitor that is causing the problems.

FWIW I have this problem on 10.7.3 and there doesn't seem to be a viable solution. After extensive troubleshooting it seems the display won't wake because I replaced the optical drive in my MacBook Pro with an SSD running Mac OS X. I did a complete reinstall of 10.7.3 tonight as a test, and even with all the defaults I am unable to wake my display from sleep. I can still use the monitor if I either shut down or unplug/replug, but this isn't really a solution. An Apple genius told me that booting from the second SATA port isn't really a supported configuration and could be the cause of the problem. He suggested I install OS X on my internal spinning HD instead of the SSD, but this would negate the reason I bought an SSD in the first place!

I did- it's an OCZ Vertex2 formatted in the fairly standard Lion way with a recovery disk:

To add more information for others reading this thread, I installed OS X 10.7.3 on an external USB hard drive as an experiment. If I use this drive as my startup disk the Thunderbolt display will wake correctly. At this point everything points to an issue using the second SATA port (the one the optical drive was connected to) for the startup disk.

This is not correct. The issue is more widespread than adding a HDD or SATA port. If you have read right through this thread and in others, people including myself have described the issue occuring with an unmodified mac mini server where dual displays are use (HDMI + thunderbolt).

In our case we use a mini DP to DVI cable to connect a monitor to the thunderbolt port. The monitor connected to this port randomly doesn't wake from system sleep and display sleep.

So whilst your issue may be caused by your drive modifications this is not the only issue users are experiencing there are wider problems with thunderbolt that are creating wake issues.

I certainly don't disagree that the first version of Thunderbolt seems to have some issues!

For my particular case, tomorrow I am going to try swapping the spinning drive and SSD and see if that changes anything. At the very least it will be a good troubleshooting step.

Have you filed bugs against all the problems you've experienced with Thunderbolt? This might bring them to the attention of Apple engineers more quickly.

I swapped the locations of the drives and my Thunderbolt display wakes as expected. So at least on a MacBookPro8,2 the two internal SATA ports are not treated equally.

I have the issue with my TB display, connected to a Mac Mini running 10.7.3. Suddenly the screen remains black whatever I am doing, Connecting, disconnecting cables, rebooting Mac Mini ...That's amazing !

I am not on a Mac Mini, but a MBP Early 2011 with Lion 10.7.3 on it. I am using Thunderbolt to the display, then have a Promise drive off of the monitor. I am running off of an internal drive on the expected SATA port (though I recently had to replace the drive, the original had cratered bad, couldn't even pass it's own SMART self-tests, but returned "Verified" status from SMART! Thank goodness for TimeMachine!)

If I leave the machine overnight, the displays are off, I press a key and voila... the MBP display comes on, but the TB display does not. The ThunderBolt port is fine, I can see the drive through the monitor, but the monitor remains dark. Of course, I can't just unplug and re-plug because the Promise is on the TB display desktop <grr>. I have now moved my "status bar" back to the small monitor so at least I can do things in that state like shut down properly. (This morning, I used the keyboard shortcuts do perform a shutdown.)

I had applied the firmware update to the TB monitor and had no such issues with 10.7.2, but since 10.7.3 came out, we all have had intermittent blackouts on the TB monitors and some of us have had the sleep issue. I just found an article describing how if the sequence screensaver->monitor sleep->system sleep is in the wrong order, their TB monitor wouldn't wake, so I ensured mine was ok (it was), but I have set my monitors to not sleep <sigh>. I'll see if that alleviates the issue. Oh, this is NOT an issue at home with my older DisplayPort display, it continues to work fine.

Yes, this is a problem with the Thunderbolt port, after all these updates I still have this problem, I'm using a VGA monitor with my Mac Mini Mid 2011 with the MiniDisplayPort to VGA on the Thunderbolt port. When the monitor sleeps it doesn't wakes up, I have to unplug and plug in the adaptor so the monitor work.

Also, I reinstalled my system using the Lion Recovery and the problem persists.

Not a fix - but a workaround for an external monitor not waking which is easier than unplugging / plugging is to go to Sys Preferences > Displays and check 'Show displays in menu bar'.

In my case this menubar icon displays the resolution currently in use twice. If the external monitor does not wake you can simply select the second resolution of same size which is not ticked and the screen comes back to life.

Note this doesn't work if you main screen isn't waking.

Nearly one year has passed and still no official solution. I have Mountain Lion installed and no system update is abailable, and I have tried to disable the auto brightness adjustment, but this problem is still not solved.

The problem is solved om my Mac Mini after a fresh install of Mountain Lion, now it wakes from sleep.