Install nsight system without reflashing the Jetson AGX Xavier

[Yurchenko]

I flashed my Jetson AGX Xavier using Jetpack 5.1.5. However, I didn’t install nsight compute and nsight system.
Is there any way I can install them without using SDK manager? (As SDK manager keeps saying that my device has a different image version from the current host.)

[linuxdev]

Yes, you can do that. The SDK Manager interface does not make it obvious, but those things listed in the first screen as to what the flash will do can actually be unchecked. The part about flashing and installing most things would simply be unchecked and it would perform only the part you are asking about. Also, if you uncheck flash, for those options which go to the Jetson you would not use recovery mode (after a flash the Jetson automatically reboots and the install of optional content occurs over ssh to the fully booted system; for installation to host PC you don’t even need a Jetson attached). Just try clicking on items like flash to see if you can uncheck them.

[Yurchenko]

Thanks for the reply.
The problem I encountered is actually in the verification process as can be seen from the figure.

When installing the softwares the SDK manager will verify the system readiness, during that process it pops up errors saying that the code of the target is wrong, and the image version is unsupported.

For the code issue, my code is simply 1111, and I have double checked several times, so I’m pretty sure about the correctness.
For the image version issue, I’ve never changed the version of the jetpack, so I don’t know why for the error message. Quite mysterious.

Actually I’ve finished my installation on the jetson using sudo apt install …

[linuxdev]

This says there is a network problem to your host PC. Packages have to be downloaded to the PC. Part of this is because JetPack/SDK Manager is just the GUI front end to the actual flash software. The “driver package” is what creates a subdirectory:
~/nvidia/nvidia_sdk/JetPack...version.../Linux_for_Tegra/

Almost all of that content is from the driver package itself, installed by JetPack/SDKM. There is also a sample root filesystem which fills the “Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/” content. Apparently your system is not able to connect to the repository.

So far as versions go, L4T is what one calls the software which gets flashed; in turn, this is just Ubuntu plus NVIDIA drivers (as soon as NVIDIA content is added to the sample rootfs…which is purely Ubuntu…it is called L4T). You have L4T R35.6.2 according to JetPack. This L4T release is valid on either Xavier or Orin. However, it is possible (I’m not saying this is necessarily the current case) that your host PC is not a valid release. I will explain further…

JetPack/SDKM is used for more than Jetsons. It has a number of products you’ve probably never heard of which it supports. If you exclude the final product you are flashing to, then JetPack/SDKM works on a much larger range of Ubuntu host PCs than is obvious. The problem then becomes that the software to be flashed also adds further limitations to the host machine version of Ubuntu which works. That host machine is creating an entire operating system image (among other things) which will limit the host PC version due to other requirements. I think L4T R35.x should work with an Ubuntu 20.04 host PC or 22.04 Ubuntu. So far as I know there are plans to increase the flexibility for host PC with the next release, but that release will go with a new product announcement (the next Jetson model after Orin). What is your host PC version? You can find out with “cat /etc/issue”.

This is a list of L4T releases and which device they apply to (if you go to a specific L4T release, e.g., R35.6.2, then it leads to the JetPack release which was designed to flash that):
https://developer.nvidia.com/linux-tegra

You might have to read further into that to find the host PC releases which work since that limitation is based on the L4T release and not on the JetPack/SDK Manager itself. For Xavier though, expect you can flash L4T R32.x or R35.x (highly recommended to use R35.x), and the host PC version for R35.x I think is both Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 (I’m using 20.04). Someone else might want to verify that 22.04 works for R35.x (it is always, so far, been two releases of host Ubuntu to work with the flashed content; if the L4T is based on a release such as Ubuntu 20.04, then the host PC can be that; usually it can also be the next release of Ubuntu, e.g., 22.04).

None of this will matter though if you cannot access the repositories. If you are trying to use a VM or a proxy, then it is quite common for something like networking needing further configuration to properly pass it through.

L4T R35.x should work with the AGX Xavier (or any Xavier) so long as it is a developer’s kit (the one sold by NVIDIA; those sold by third parties on their own custom carrier boards likely need firmware patches).