Flashed AGX Orin, now no display and can't access unit through USB

[odhran]

I’m in serious trouble here and am afraid I’ve bricked my module. Here’s what happened:

1. I bought an M.2 SSD (WD Black 2TB M.2 2280 NVME PCIe 4.0) so that I could use it as the primary drive
2. I installed it correctly and to test it, I formatted it and added it as a secondary drive. All worked well
3. I decided I’d now like to use it as the primary bootable drive and used the SDK Manager on Ubuntu 22.04 to flash the unit with JetPack 6.2, setting the nvme drive as primary
4. SDK Manager told me it flashed it correctly
5. Tried to boot up the unit, but there is no display. The little white light turns on, the fans engage, and the keyboard and mouse lights come on like they’re connected. But there is nothing on screen.
6. I tried to reconnect it to my laptop but it doesn’t detect anything through USB (I connect the USB cable that came with the module to the ‘front’ usb input on the unit, not the one over the power input)
7. I tried force recovery mode but it does nothing

I’m not very used to using Linux but can usually muddle my way through it. I’ve tried everything I can understand how to do by reading the other posts on this forum. Nothing seems to work. Have I bricked a £2,000 computer? Please help!

[carolyuu]

Hi,
If the device cannot be flashed/booted, please refer to the page to get uart log from the device:
Jetson/General debug - eLinux.org
And get logs of host PC and Jetson device for reference. If you are using custom board, you can compare uart log of developer kit and custom board to get more information.
Also please check FAQs:
Jetson AGX Orin FAQ
If possible, we would suggest follow quick start in developer guide to re-flash the system:
Quick Start — NVIDIA Jetson Linux Developer Guide 1 documentation
And see if the issue still persists on a clean-flashed system.
Thanks!

[DavidDDD]

Hi,

@odhran

recovery mode

How do you do recovery mode?
Please refer the official doc steps.
Also change other USB-C flashing cable to cross check whether issue exist.

Thanks

[odhran]

Yes, I followed these steps exactly - nothing registers as connected through USB on the host computer. To be honest, I’m just a bit lost about this whole process. It’s really stupid that a simple flash process could completely knock out the unit like this. Not being able to see what’s happening (if anything) is not good at all.

[DavidDDD]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.
Some questions to confirm:

• Is your AGX Orin a dev kit or a custom board?
  • If you not sure, you could provide the link you bought.

Please refer below link to record serial console log when boot up.

NVIDIA Jetson Orin AGX - In Board - Getting in Board - Serial Console

Thanks

[odhran]

It’s a dev kit. I got it here:

945-13730-0055-000 | NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin 64GB Development Kit | RS

[odhran]

I got a little further. For some reason, when the displayport is connected to my monitor, the device doesn’t connect to my ubuntu laptop via USB. I unplugged this and the laptop detected L4T-tegra.

I’m not able to SSH into it, it gives me a message about it waiting for system configuration. So I plugged back in the displayport and saw this:

It looks like it’s trying to run a system config and waiting for user input.

I connected via minicom and saw the following:

So I tried to reboot the AGX from that ‘waiting’ screen it was in (pressed ctrl+alt+del) and it looked like it was shutting down to go for reboot. Unfortunately when it powered on again I’m left with a completely blank screen - the original issue.

Why would it not display anything? There’s something very odd going on here. It was working perfectly before the flash. Is there a display driver incompatibility in this version of the OS?

[DavidDDD]

Hi,

The log might be a below image show (referred link)

It appears that you don’t do the oem config before flashing and the system need you set up a user before login system.

There are two options you could try:

1. minicom to the device again and do the oem config
   • Try to press TAB, ENTER , and arrow keys to interact and follow the guide.
2. Reflash the device using sdk manager
   • Please refer to sdk manager doc Automatic setupsection.

Thanks

[odhran]

I’m going to give it another go this afternoon, but FYI, I followed the automatic set up with Pre-config and I’m left in the no display scenario.

Will try again with minicom and report back but I’m not hopeful. As you can see from my screenshot, it doesn’t complete the display as per your screenshot @DavidDDD

[sdpetrides]

I am having a similar issue and would like support.

I went through the initial setup in headless mode, using my Mac as the host, connected to the Jetson with the USB-C port.

After completing Step 1, I changed my root directory to an NVMe SSD.

Here are the results:

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0 7:0 0 16M 1 loop
mmcblk0 179:0 0 59.2G 0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 57.8G 0 part
...
└─mmcblk0p15 179:15 0 479.5M 0 part
...
nvme0n1 259:0 0 1.8T 0 disk
└─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 1.8T 0 part /

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p1 1.8T 5.5G 1.7T 1% /

Based on this result, I believed this was successful. I started to install the JetPack components.

After the reboot step, I have not been after to access the USB-C or use the DisplayPort at all. When I use the microUSB for debugging, I can access the shell, even view my root filesystem, but I don’t know how to proceed from here.

minicom_out.log (84.1 KB)

[odhran]

I was able to minicom into the device, run through the setup manually and was left with a command prompt - tried to plug in the monitor, but still nothing. So I went for one final try at flashing the system and for whatever crazy reason, this time it worked. I have no idea what went wrong unfortunately. I followed exactly the steps I did previously. I wish I could help but there’s something fishy about this process - although equally it could also be me. Sorry I can’t be further help at identifying the issue.

[odhran]

In the interests of trying to help others, I’ll document exactly what I did this time to get it working again.

1. I ran minicom in the terminal so that I could see the raw output of the unit: minicom -D /dev/ttyACM0 -8 -b 115200
2. I plugged the USB-C on the front of the unit to my laptop (ubuntu 22 installed with latest SDK manager)
3. I plugged in the power at the back of the unit (again, the USB-C port)
4. Minicom allowed me to see the raw output and after some booting up logs it started what I think is a “first time user” installation, asking me to accept licence agreements, select a language etc. Oddly, it also tried to connect to my network but that failed saying it couldn’t install DHCP
5. Eventually I got to a normal unix prompt: user@ubuntu:~$
6. At this point, I decided to try my luck flashing the system again, so I booted up the SDK manager on my laptop - the unit is still plugged in and minicom is still connected
7. I selected Automatic Setup, Pre-config, install on my SSD (NVMe) instead of EMMC. I also selected to install all of the SDKs and components - I literally checked everything
8. It started flashing the unit, and during the first ~12% progress, I kept getting network error messages, device disconnecting and reconnecting, but at around 12% it said that the flash process worked correctly
9. It then wanted to install the extras I selected, so it asked me again to select the device etc. (the post flash screen in the guide). At this point, it failed, saying it couldn’t SSH into the unit - I think this is the point where I went wrong last time. I kept retrying until I believe the unit rebooted automatically and it could continue. I think the unit has to restart and there is no indication that this is happening, so it fails if you click through too quickly.
10. It continued to install the rest of the items and eventually completed. I pressed finish and close
11. I then (without restarting or powering off the unit) plugged in the DP cable and my mouse and keyboard, and hey presto it magically works now.

I have no idea if any of this will help others but it seems something went badly wrong each of the other times I tried flashing over the past couple of weeks. Fingers crossed I won’t have to do this too often! :D

[odhran]

Also, thanks to all in this thread who tried to help. I couldn’t have done this without you <3

[sdpetrides]

I was also able to solve my issue. I flashed Linux using the SDK Manager directly onto the NVMe and that worked. I’m able to reach the Jetson using USB-C and DisplayPort.