Jetson AGX Orin UEFI boot menu - display blank

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson AGX Orin
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1

Trying to access the UEFI boot menu on a Jetson AGX Orin.

When using ‘ESC’ at initial boot (can hear the device “POST” with the internal piezo speaker) the unit will show a blank display (no splash, no boot menu, but the monitor definitely is receiving a signal). I am using a monitor that supports native display port so the AGX should receive valid EDID information.

Same issue if I first boot into Linux for Tegra and then restart with a command to automatically boot into UEFI.

“systemctl reboot –firmware-setup”

If this was a resolution issue I would expect the monitor to show some “Resolution out of Bounds” error.

Fairly confident I am on UEFI boot 35.4.1

To show the boot version use: “nvbootctrl dump-slots-info | grep ‘Current version’”. The current UEFI release version will be shown.

Boot Version:
nvbootctrl dump-slots-info
Current version: 35.4.1
Capsule update status: 0
Current bootloader slot: A
Active bootloader slot: A
num_slots: 2
slot: 0, status: normal
slot: 1, status: normal

2

*** Please note that this reply is generated by LLM automatically ***

To access the UEFI boot menu on a Jetson AGX Orin, you can try the following steps:

  1. Connect your monitor to the Jetson AGX Orin using a DisplayPort cable.
  2. Power on the Jetson AGX Orin.
  3. Immediately press the ESC key repeatedly during boot-up. This should bring up the UEFI boot menu.

However, in your case, it seems that pressing the ESC key is not bringing up the UEFI boot menu, and instead, you are getting a blank display with no splash screen or boot menu.

To troubleshoot this issue, you can try the following:

  1. Verify that your monitor is set to the correct input source (DisplayPort).
  2. Check that the DisplayPort cable is securely connected to both the Jetson AGX Orin and the monitor.
  3. Try using a different DisplayPort cable or a different monitor to rule out any issues with the current setup.
  4. If you are using a KVM switch or a docking station, try connecting the Jetson AGX Orin directly to the monitor to rule out any issues with the KVM switch or docking station.

It’s also worth noting that the Jetson AGX Orin uses a UEFI firmware version 3.5.4.1, which can be verified by running the command nvbootctrl dumpslotsinfo | grep Current version in the Linux terminal.

If none of the above steps resolve the issue, it’s possible that there is a problem with the UEFI firmware or the hardware configuration. In this case, you may want to try updating the UEFI firmware to the latest version or seeking further assistance from NVIDIA support.

In comparison, the Jetson Xavier NX and Jetson AGX Xavier use a different boot flow, which involves the BootROM, Bootloader Components, TegraBoot, and UEFI. However, the steps to access the UEFI boot menu are similar, and you can try pressing the ESC key during boot-up to bring up the UEFI boot menu.

It’s also worth noting that the UEFI boot menu may not be displayed if the Jetson AGX Orin is set to boot in UEFI mode, but the monitor is not set to the correct input source or is not receiving a valid signal. In this case, you may need to adjust the monitor settings or try using a different monitor to resolve the issue.

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4

Hi grant53,

Are you using the devkit or custom board for AGX Orin?

It is an old Jetpack 5.1.2 release.
Could you also verify if there’s the similar issue with the latest Jetpack 5.1.6(L4T r35.6.4)?

5

Sorry for the massive delay in responding. Indeed, at the time of this post the firmware version was old and must have pre-dated Jetpack 6. I do recall somewhere in this research UEFI boot menu options were not supported in an earlier release of firmware v35 but v35.4.1 did not have it. I am now on v36.5.0 and that does have a UEFI boot menu, All of the above was done through SDK Manager.

I probably should open this into a different thread as my goal is to PXE boot into the Orin for automated OS installation. I have found that I can boot into PXE; however:

  1. The display port driver is not available in the image used by PXE. I think this is because the kernel config is intended for flashing firmware (minimal device options) and not for a normal boot process. The kernel image was extracted out of “Jetson_Linux_R36.5.0_aarch64.tbz2” used by SDK Manager.
  2. The kernel is searching for a root filesystem. Nvidia’s documentation indicates to mount a network based root file system using one of 3 choices, the minimal version, a basic version or a desktop version but I think the basic and desktop versions require use of a script to generate the rootfs. I have not found the source for this script (maybe I missed the reference). Ideally, the Ubuntu installer would be located in this generated rootfs.
6

It seems you have resolved the original display blank issue after updating to the latest r36.5.

For this use case, you have to setup BSP package(or use the one downloaded by SDK manager) and run the flash command manually. Please refer to Flashing Support — NVIDIA Jetson Linux Developer Guide for details.