External ThunderBolt 3 SSD drive not recognized on Ubuntu 17.10 running on Macbook Pro A1706

So I've installed Ubuntu 17.10 on an external SSD and had it boot on my MacBook Pro A1706 (late 2016), works like a charm (installed the keyboard/touchbar module).

I have an external ThunderBolt 3 (USB type C) SSD drive. When I connect it, Ubuntu doesn't recognize it. lspci shows Thunderbolt is available. When connecting the drive to MacOS, it works perfectly.

Any ideas?

Thunderbolt requires either that you manually authorize your devices. However no utility exists in current distributions for that. You can either try compiling yourself the tbtadm utility found here: https://github.com/intel/thunderbolt-software-user-space

Or go the unsafe way as described in the kernel documentation:

Those users who just want to connect any device without any sort of manual work, can add following line to /etc/udev/rules.d/99-local.rules:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="thunderbolt", ATTR{authorized}=="0", ATTR{authorized}="1"

This will authorize all devices automatically when they appear. However, keep in mind that this bypasses the security levels and makes the system vulnerable to DMA attacks.