Support for Dell monitors with built-in docks

[pimlie]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Various usb-c Dell monitors contain a built-in docking station that f.e. adds an ethernet port. These monitors have their own upgradable firmware, but don't seem to be supported atm.

Describe the solution you'd like

Add support for these firmware upgradable Dell monitors

Describe alternatives you've considered

Doing it by hand using Dell's upgrade software, but it would be nicer/easier if fwupd could include it, see below

Additional context

Dell has a Linux upgrade software tool for these monitors, see as example a Dell U2421E monitor: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/dell-u2421e-monitor/drivers

There is a complication though (isn't there always? 🙃), after you select Ubuntu 20.04 LTS as Operating system (as 22.04 is not an option in the dropdown), there is one item. This item is called Dell U2421E 24.1" Monitor Driver but the file you will download is called monitorfirmwareupdateutility-u2421e_2.5.3.914_amd64.deb (so there is a mismatch between the description and filename). This deb contains the upgrade software including a firmware (v102), but not the latest firmware. Seems that Dell only published the latest firmware for Windows 10/11, so you also need to download the item called WIN OS Firmware Update Package (Ver. M3T103) for U2421E monitor with filename Dell_MonitorFirmwareUpdateUtility_U2421E_M3T103.zip. The zip contains a self-extractable exe which you need to open as a zip-file so you can extract the M3T103 firmware from that, then in the Dell upgrade software tool on Linux you can select the extracted 103 firmware before upgrading.

Hence why it would be so much easier if fwupd would support these usb-c monitors with upgradable firmware 😍

-- edit --

Btw, I realised that a ticket in this repo might not be the correct place to ask for device support. But using the example monitor above, https://fwupd.org/lvfs/search?value=u2421e doesn't tell me how to ask the vendor to add support (it only says please contact your hardware vendor and ask them to support the LVFS.). And I'm doubtful that the team responsible for lvfs at Dell will receive any message if I ask through their first line support, so hopefully somebody from the Dell LVFS team will see this :)

[hughsie]

@CragW anything you can share here?

[superm1]

Since Windows has the up to date tool and firmware I was going to say Windows would be better for this case. If you're not comfortable sharing the dump publicly I suggest throwing it on Google Drive and you can share it with both Richard and I (we both have Gmail addresses).

But FWIW I don't think that a service tag for an out of warranty monitor is likely PII :)

Btw, there is not just one device. When using a proper cable (I guess one that supports the SS tx/rx pairs) it add's both:

Interesting! I would certainly like to see which ones it actually interacts with. If it's anything like dell-dock - it's a single HID endpoint that does the majority of the work.

And just to be clear this isn't committing us to doing anything, this is just to better understand it if/when it could be supported. The proper case for doing work needs to be made to Dell.

[pimlie]

Thanks, have sent the zipped pcap by email!

And just to be clear this isn't committing us to doing anything

Thanks for the heads up, but I actually didn't report this for myself as so much as I've already upgraded the firmware of my monitor now. So mostly just trying to help other Linux users / the Linux ecosystem in general :)

[superm1]

Thanks, have sent the zipped pcap by email!

Hmm I didn't receive. Not in spam either. Might be better to do it via link in case something on either end is filtering it.

[pimlie]

Great!

Just in case it got delivered in your spam too, I also sent a 2nd email yesterday with the capture of the enumeration done by Dell's fw update utility on startup 📸 🖥️

[hughsie]

I can see some interesting stuff in the dump -- using a .upg file -- this isn't something I've seen before but might just be a binary blob with a custom extension. I see U2421E, M3T103 and Microchip Hub Feature Controller in the dump, but no smoking gun. The interesting bit is the end of the enumeration, you can see a #ISP# magic token -- but that's not something I've seen before. I did ponder it could be SAM-BA, but I don't see anything like that token there, and also SAM-BA is normally over ttyusb not this low level protocol. My best guess (also due to the huge numbers of retries for every step) is that the USB hub is just exposing a i2c (or SPI, but less likely) bridge and we're hitting that over-and-over to read and write a SPI device somewhere.