Agx reflash and keep the data

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson AGX Xavier
1

Hi,

For some reason my AGX Xavier won’t boot any more, is there a way to reflash the AGX but keep the data? and How? Please help.

edit: I connect serial console port and log the output during boot up as
console.log (95.3 KB)
. It seems the agx bootup successfully and show the login prompt in the serial console. Then I try to remote login from ssh and I am able to login. So somehow the GUI mess up. Is there a way for quick fix the GUI? My agx is running 18.04 and Jetpack 4.2. It already installed camera drivers, so I would rather not to reflash it ; )) Thanks for your help.

2

Again, need to clarify something first

  1. Why do you think “not able to ssh login” is due to GUI? I don’t think those two have connections. Your etherent interface seems not coming out at all.

  2. Your kernel log shows display driver gives no response after you plug a monitor.

It looks like there are two issues here.

For GUI, please share me

  • The result of lsmod
  • The log file /var/log/xorg.0.log
3

lsmod:

bnep                   19334  2
fuse                  119499  3
xt_multiport            3741  4
iptable_filter          3008  1
ip6table_filter         3015  1
ip6_tables             21554  1 ip6table_filter
zram                   30145  8
overlay                54670  0
imx290                137710  4
nvgpu                1721849  18
binfmt_misc            14730  1
bluedroid_pm           16187  0
ip_tables              21475  1 iptable_filter
x_tables               38080  5 xt_multiport,ip_tables,iptable_filter,ip6table_filter,ip6_tables

Attached please find the
Xorg.0.log (14.0 KB)
file of /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Magically this morning, it bootup with GUI (yesterday tried dozen times and cannot bootup GUI…) Could you share your insights on why this happened and how to avoid this? and if it happens again, how to quick recover it? (instead wait overnight?) Thanks a lot for your help.

4

I don’t have any insight here. Not enough info to know what is going on.

Is the log you shared right now under the error case or not?
If this is not under error case, then it does not help.

Also, is your ethernet connection coming back now?

5

the lsmod and Xorg.0.log are captured this morning after bootup “normally”

The ethernet occasionally has hiccup (don’t know why) but otherwise normal…

Typically which file to look at when GUI doesn’t bootup? can I just make a backup of that file and resume it when this happen again?

6

Retrospect notes: (might help those who has the same experience) after a road test the system crash (perhaps due to power not stable in the car), then come back to the lab and plug back to regular power supply, try to boot up and won’t “boot up” (no GUI but blinking screen with full of boot up text, no login prompt…) after several attempts ( > 7 times) and then plug in serial console to find out why… and found it actually boot up and show the login prompt in the serial console (but not on the screen). Then try Alt-Ctrl-F2 and then I see the login prompt and can login from there and backup all my data, then sudo shutdown… that calls a day. Next day, when I boot up again, the GUI shows up ! Everything seems back to normal again. So I would guess: in my case (don’t how to specified it), if do following steps, the system might be able to recover:

  1. somehow the crash (due to power interrupt?) might cause the GUI status file got corrupted(?)
  2. boot up and check serial console if it show login prompt (means did boot up successfully but may not see it on AGX screen)
  3. then hit Alt-Ctrl-F2 (or F1, etc.) to see if you can login there
  4. if yes, that might “fix” (rewrite) the GUI status file (how? don’t know) then try to sudo reboot from there and get finger cross…

Praise the Lord! I don’t need to reflash this time and I already got all my data backup. I hope this might help someone encounter the similar situation. Before panic, try the above steps to see if you can get back to normal boot up again. Good Luck ; )

7

You need to share the xorg.0.log when the error happens. Thus, we can know where to check next.

There are lots of reason that could cause desktop gone. Even running out of disk space can make GUI gone.

8

I would suggest that if you suspect boot is going to fail (I am guessing when transferring from car to other), then set up serial console to log the boot. It would be very nice to see (in addition to the Xorg.0.log) the dmesg occurring during the flashing screen.

FYI, if something causes an incorrect shutdown in the car, then it is possible that the first boot after this will replay a journal in the ext4 filesystem and some content will be lost or corrupt. Conceivably this could be fixed with a reboot, but that’s quite a lot of guessing.

9

the console.log in the initial post was in error condition (that is bootup with flashing screen without login prompt neither GUI.)

10

That log does not actually show enough to say what is going on. Even the Xorg log is not particularly useful in this case. I don’t know if it would help, but using ssh or other console login, could you edit “/etc/X11/Xorg.conf”, and when you find Section "Device", add this line to it?

Section "Device"
    Option "ModeDebug"
...

Then, after it boots to the error, the Xorg log will have much more information. Post the more verbose “/var/log/Xorg.0.log” (which might provide information the less verbose log does not show).

Also, is the monitor purely HDMI without adapters?

Btw, I suspect you will end up flashing anyway, but you could clone the rootfs first to save a copy. The clone can be used during the flash to reflash that same clone. Limitations are that the clone and the version flashed must be from the same release, and that if the problem is something on the clone, then you’ll still have the problem.

11

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