Cannot Boot Brand New Jetson Nano Orin 8GB

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Nano
1

Hi,

I recently purchased a brand-new Jetson Nano Orin 8GB and am experiencing an issue during the boot process. Each time I power on the board after flashing JetPack 6.1 onto the SD card, the following happens:

  1. The board shows the message “L4TLauncher attempting to direct boot”.
  2. Shortly afterward, the screen goes dark, and the board does not boot further.

Steps I’ve Taken:

  • I downloaded the JetPack 6.1 image from the official NVIDIA website and flashed it onto a 32GB Class 10 UHS-1 SD card using Balena Etcher.
  • I ensured the power supply is stable, using a 5V 4A adapter.
  • Re-flashed the SD card multiple times, with no improvement.
  • Tried another SD card to rule out card issues.

Questions:

  • Is there something additional I need to configure for the first boot?
  • Should I run sudo rm -rf /etc/nvpmodel.conf as mentioned in the documentation, even though the board hasn’t booted properly yet?
  • Could this be a hardware issue, or am I missing a step in the setup process?
2

FYI, the Nano Orin dev kits do not have eMMC memory, which is why they boot to the SD card. However, Orin Nano dev kits do have QSPI memory on the module. That QSPI content contains the software equivalent of what a BIOS would do (Jetsons don’t have a hardware BIOS), along with boot chain software. L4T is just Ubuntu plus NVIDIA drivers, and the SD card is the operating system side of that; the rest goes into QSPI.

L4T R36.x only needs to be flashed once to the Jetson’s QSPI before it can work with many R36.x releases. You need to flash this QSPI once. It is possible that the Jetson you got has L4T R35.x in QSPI, and this is not compatible with an R36.x SD card (if this is the case, then several R35.x releases would work, but not R36.x).

3

i noticed that firmware version is 3.0-32616947 built on 2023-02-21T10:13:46*00

if i understand you correct you are suggesting to use JetPack 5.1.1 if i want to directly boot up the board, or i could update firmware of board using to nvidia sdk manager to be able use jetpack 6 right ?

4

I don’t know which L4T release that particular firmware uses. I am indeed suggesting flashing the module’s QSPI to JetPack 5.x (which flashes L4T R35.x; JetPack versions are installer software, L4T is what gets installed, but the two are usually linked in release version) if you want the SD card to use L4T 35.x. If you want the SD card to use L4T R36.x (JetPack 6.x), then I suggest you flash the module QSPI once with that to use the L4T R36.x SD card.

It is indeed that JetPack/SDK Manager flash which sets up the module to be able to use the various SD card releases (basically, boot chain and firmware).

5

You need a bare metal Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 PC (no virtual machine, won’t work) and SDK Manager. Put your Devkit into recovery mode and use SDK Manager to flash the system.
https://docs.nvidia.com/sdk-manager/install-with-sdkm-jetson/index.html

If this fails, connect an USB-3.3V LVTTL cable to the debug uart and look for error messages.

6

It looks like your firmware needs to be upgraded. Here’s how to work through this issue if you only want to use the SD card approach according to NVIDIA engineers: 🚀 Initial Setup Guide - NVIDIA Jetson AI Lab

7

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