Thunderbolt disconnects when MacBook sleeps

omar.shaya wrote:

When the MacBook is connected to the power adapter, the TBD is not affected when I close the MacBook.

Unfortunately, this does not apply with my 2011 MacBook Pro. Using the power adapter does not make it wake from sleep if it's connected to the TBD. 😟

This is still not working for me. I have a brand new rMBP 15" running the factory installed Mavericks (no upgrade) connected to two daisy-chained TBD, also brand new. I use the first TBD directly connected as the power source for the rMBP and daisy-chained the second TBD to it using an Genuine Apple Thunderbolt Cable MD861ZM/A.

Connecting the power adapter to the rMBP instead of the power supplied by the TBD does not change anything. Also the hibernatemode does not do any difference. Neither did any combinations of settings of the power savings menu in OS X.

As soon as the rMBP is put to sleep via Apple Menu > Sleep the TBDs turn off and so does the rMBP. When I press a button on the keyboard (I tried with wired and Bluetooth) the rMBP turns on but the TBDs don't. Only when I shortly disconnect the Thunderbolt Cable at the rMBP side and plug it in again the TBDs will come up.

It is a hardware issue. As soon as I disconnect the second daisy-chained TBD it works seemlessly in any condition. It's probably related to different firmware revisions in the cables or TBDs or both. But it's definitely related to the hardware setup and has nothing to do the way OS X does hibernate. It worked fine with two non TBDs before.

😠

Please don't make people belief this would be something that could be fixed by some magic command. What you experience as 'working' is probably just a side effect and does not fix the real problem.

Doubleslash,

Not sure if you saw my solution in the earlier posts to this forum. However, if you did not, I can tell you with 100% certainty that is worked for 95% of the users who had the same issue. In fact, my solution, which is to set 'hibernatemode=0' fixes this issue for me 100% of the time. I went on a trip a couple of weeks ago and set the hibernatemode=3 (default) since I was going to use my MBP (late 2010) as a laptop and wanted to conserve battery when the machine was put to sleep. When I returned home, I forgot to set it back to zero and discovered that the issue you and everyone else on this discussion has, came back. And, I'm on the latest Mevericks version! I had hoped, somewhere along the way, that Apple would have fixed this with all the updates they put out since I first encounter this issue. But, that was not the case. Of course, at this point, I knew exactly what I had to do to to allow my computer to wake from sleep with the TBD waking up as well (and not complaining about the drive attached to it having disconnected improperly or the ethernet adapter not connecting). So, here is what you do from a terminal window:

mbp> sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

To set the mode for using your MBP as a desktop machine and to ensure the TBD waits properly when you wake up the computer.

And, when you take your MBP on the road:

mbp> sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

It's really that simple. Hope you have as much success with this as the many others on this discussion.

Stuart

Hi Stuart,

thanks for your fast reply. I have tried with various settings and just repeated your suggestion:

> sudo pmset -a hibernate mode 0

> pmset -g

Reboot.

> pmset -g

Sleep.

TBDs don't come up. Again, it works as soon as I disconnect the second daisy chained TBD and put the rMBP to sleep manually (works also with hibernatemode=3). I could probably try to use a 2m TBD Cable to directly connect the second TBD instead of daisy-chaining it to the first TBD. But that would be a 40 EUR investment to solve this pain.

For information, this is my current pmset -g output which reproduces the problem.

daniels-mbp:~ daniel$ pmset -g

Active Profiles:

Battery Power -1

AC Power -1*

Currently in use:

standbydelay 10800

standby 1

womp 1

halfdim 1

hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

darkwakes 1

gpuswitch 2

networkoversleep 0

disksleep 10

sleep 0

autopoweroffdelay 14400

hibernatemode 0

autopoweroff 1

ttyskeepawake 1

displaysleep 10

acwake 0

lidwake 1

Regards,

Daniel

Daniel,

Ah, I missed that you are daisy chaining TBDs. Yea, so, my fix has only been confirmed to work with a single display connected to the computer via TB cable. And, this is probably why my solution does not work for you. I would see if you can borrow a TB cable from someone just to test it out before spending 40 EUR for another TB cable and a solution that may or may not work. If it does work though, then you do have a solution. Otherwise, you'll have to poke Apple a little harder for a solution.

I just verified it using the 2m TB Cable that connects my second to the first display - works out of the box. So I guess I need to throw out another 50EUR for a 3m cable - non-Apple of course.

This is starting to get ridicoulous. I am quite disappointed by the Apple TBD. I would not recommend buying it anymore. One of the major value props - to serve as a docking station and TB forwarding hub is now gone.

Ok, meanwhile the additional cables arrived - and it works like a charm now. Hibernatemode = 0.

In multiple replies, g8k3prhas noted that using hibernate mode 0 solves the problem when connected to a Thuderbolt Display but worsens battery life when "on the road." I think I have a solution that I'd like you all to test, as I will.

The pmset program allows you to set modes for different states, being battery, charger, ups, or all. g8k3pr gave us a command that set hibernatemode for all, using the "-a" flag. Instead, why not just set this state for when the laptop is using the power adapter, assuming you always plug your laptop to the power adapter when you plug in the thunderbolt cable?

So, instead of

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

Try

sudo pmset -c hibernatemode 0

And, if you had already set hibernatemode to zero for all states with g8k3pr's original command, you can set the battery state's mode back to three, to take advantage of your Mac's ability to quickly and efficiently handle hibernation:

sudo pmset -b hibernatemode 3

To see what you've set for all the different states, ask pmset to show custom states:

pmset -g custom

-Shawn

Hi Shawn,

good catch. We should make use of the different options for hibernate/sleep policies for different power states. In general you would expect hibernatemode = 3 being the default of portables to cut power from memory when sleeping for an extended time whereas hibernatemode = 0 will supply power to memory until the battery is depleted in which case you will actually loose memory content and potentially data. So setting hibernatemode to 0 also for states in which an AC adapter is not present is also dangerous.

Best Regards,

Daniel

Shawn,

Perfectly valid suggestion and definitely doable as long as you keep your mac plugged in with the TBD connected. Thanks for the suggestion

Stuart (aka G8k3pr)

Hey, just curious... your solution has been working fine for me ever since I implemented it via the easy script you sent me. Is this new info something I should be using? Or, just stick with the original?

skiphunt,

It's not imperative that you implement the solution outlined in the last few posts unless you want to have separate settings for when the computer is unplugged and not connected to the TBD. If the script I created works, and you use it to toggle the setting for both power and battery, then stick with what works. Otherwise, if you find yourself in need of the split settings, then you could follow the instructions above. There's nothing wrong with the script I wrote and it works for most people who don't like to deal with the command line.

Cheers,

Stuart

OK. Thanks. I mostly use my MBP 13in (non-retina) hooked up to the TBD. I leave it set at 0 as per your script. Every now and then I'll take it to the coffee shop or the living room to cycle through the battery or on a short 2-3 trip. In which case I use your script to set it to 3. I'd say 90% of the time it's connected to power & the TBD.

I have a 15 inch early 2011 MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt display. All was fine running Lion (10.7), but after upgrading to Mavericks (10.9.3) it would not recognize the Thunderbolt display or devices attached to it when it woke from sleeping--as various folks here have noted. I used the SetSleepMode AppleScript to set the hibernate mode to 0, and that seemed to fix it.

Recently, I installed the update to 10.9.4, and it seems to have corrected this problem.

Before the installation, I set the hibernate mode back to the default (3). I then installed the update. With the hibernate mode still set to 3, it seems to be working as it should. The display comes back up after waking, it wakes from the keyboard attached to the display, and so on. Hopefully this observation isn't premature.

I won't know for a few days, but apple technical support just had me do the hibernate mode 0 (zero) as a fix for my two TBDisplay problem with waking up from sleep mode. He didn't recommend that I change the setting for use when I'm on battery power. Though it sounds like the issue is different if you are on battery and still connected and using external displays. I normally would not use that mode of operation. We will see if this fixes the problem. But Apple should fix this problem instead of doing this work around plan.