JetPack 7.2 ISO Image can fail with 'Unsupported board!' error on custom Thor carrier boards

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson Thor
1

The file: /ai/jetsoniso_setup.bash inside
iso-editable-thor/casper/ubuntu-server-minimal.ubuntu-server.installer.kernel.nvidia.squashfs

has a bug that may affect non-NVIDIA Thor (and Orin) custom carrier boards.

jetsoniso_setup.bash’s detect_board_type() matches against literal exact strings:

  case $board in
      "NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor Developer Kit")   FAMILY="thor"; CHIPID="0x26" ;;
      "NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit")   FAMILY="orin"; CHIPID="0x23"; ... ;;
      "NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX"*|"NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano"*)   FAMILY="orin"; ... ;;
      *) echo "Unsupported board!"; exit 1 ;;
  esac

Notice the Orin NX / Nano arm already uses wildcards (“…”), so partner SOMs work there. The two AGX arms don’t — they require the exact NVIDIA devkit string. That means JetPack 7.2 ISO install will fail on a carrier board that isn’t the NVIDIA-branded AGX Thor or AGX Orin Developer Kit, even though
the SoC is identical and the installer payload (/ai/jetsoniso_thor-ai.yaml, /opt/nvidia/ptable.thor., etc.) is already fully built for that SKU.

The fix is to give the AGX names the same wildcard treatment that’s already in place for Orin NX/Nano.

       case $board in
  -        "NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor Developer Kit")
  +        *"Thor"*)
               FAMILY="thor"
               CHIPID="0x26"
               ;;
  -        "NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit")
  +        *"Orin"*)
               FAMILY="orin"
               CHIPID="0x23"
               CMDLINE_PARAMS="..."
               ;;
           "NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX"*|"NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano"*)
               FAMILY="orin"
               ...
4

Follow-up: a second failure can occur in jetsoniso_setup.bash .on no-EEPROM custom carriers. @wichiu

After a prospective patch in detect_board_type() to recognize custom Thor boards, the installer can still fail further down with one of:

Failed to get platform spec
Failed to get platform compatibility spec

This comes from the EFI-var / EEPROM fallback in detect_board_type():

  if [ -f "${efivar_spec}" ]; then
      TNSPEC=$(dd if="$efivar_spec" ...)
  else
      TNSPEC=$(generate_platform_spec_string)   # → parse_eeprom_fields → reads i2c *-0050
  fi

On custom Thor carriers without TegraPlatformSpec/TegraPlatformCompatSpec EFI variables and without an NVIDIA-format EEPROM at i2c address 0x50, both paths fail, TNSPEC/COMPAT_SPEC stay empty, and the script exits.

Suggested fix: when both fallbacks fail, provide a default spec from FAMILY instead of exiting. The constants already exist in the script — e.g. for Thor:

  BOARD_ID_AGX_THOR + BOARD_NAME_AGX_THOR_DEVKIT + COMPAT_FAB_000

That would let custom carriers with no EEPROM complete the install with sensible AGX-Thor defaults, matching how resolve_compat_spec_params() already handles the unknown-board case in its *) arm.

Same root cause as the model-string issue: the installer assumes NVIDIA reference-board provisioning (EEPROM populated to NVIDIA’s format, or UEFI EFI vars set by NVIDIA’s CBoot). Custom carrier boards may have neither.

6

Hi,
The ISO image is for AGX Thor developer kit. Do you hit the issue while upgrading developer kit?

7

I don’t but other boards have. Problem in Thor Developer kit

I was just trying to find a possible fix.