i-tec USB 3.0 Dual Docking Station & Ubuntu 16.04

[There is updated article for Ubuntu 17.10]

My desktop looks like:

2016-10-27 08.18.44.jpg

I wanted to have 2 external monitors, but my Dell  Inspiron 15 (7559) has only one HDMI port. Other thing was that I had to plug/unplug many cables when I wanted to go to meeting room. So I decided to buy USB 3.0 dock. Not an easy task when you love Linux. Most docks only support Windows and OSX.

I have purchased i-tec USB 3.0 Dual Docking because they promise Ubuntu 16.04 compatibility. They only “forgot” to mention that only KMS drivers are supported, so forgot official NVIDIA blob drivers. Even with Nouveau drivers there was issues. Because I had also another issues I switched off dedicated card completely.

Then it was necessary to install DisplayLink driver from here. But after reboot graphic part of dock did not work. By running dmesg I have found out that kernel module was not loaded. I am using SecureBoot and their kernel module is not signed. So I have to do following as root:

cd /root 
mkdir signing 
cd signing 

#generate certificate - do this once, but keep result files - you will have to sign modules for every kernel update 
openssl req -new -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout MOK.priv -outform DER -out MOK.der -nodes -days 36500 -subj "/CN=Descriptive name/" 

#import your certificate as trusted into SecureBoot #remember entered password - you have to fill it after reboot and confirm adding certificate 
mokutil --import MOK.der 

#sign your module - you have to do this on every kernel update 
/usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/scripts/sign-file sha256 ./MOK.priv ./MOK.der $(modinfo -n evdi)

Then reboot your computer, authorize new certificate and dock should work!

Currently I have last issue: when playing music through dock it is time to time reset. It disconnects monitors, network and audio…

Tags:  DisplayLink  Ubuntu