Jetson Orin Nano Dev Kit — Black screen after update-initramfs

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson Orin Nano
1

Hello,

I am using a Jetson Orin Nano Dev Kit and I encountered a serious boot issue.

Here is exactly what I did:

  1. I created a file:
    sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/uvcvideo.conf

    Inside the file I added:
    options uvcvideo quirks=384 nodrop=1 timeout=3000

  2. Then I ran:
    sudo update-initramfs -u
    sudo reboot

After reboot, the system stopped booting. On startup I only get a black screen with a blinking white line in the top left corner.

What I tried afterwards:

  • I mounted the SD card on another Ubuntu machine and manually checked /boot/initrd, /boot/initrd.img-5.15.148-tegra, and extlinux.conf.
  • I removed broken initrd files (initrd.broken, initrd.before_restore).
  • I deleted the uvcvideo.conf file from /etc/modprobe.d.
  • I flashed a clean JetPack image to the SD card using Balena Etcher (twice).
  • I even restored from backup images.

Unfortunately, the issue persists — the device does not boot, only the black screen appears.

My questions:

  • Is this problem caused by running “update-initramfs -u” on Jetson (instead of nv-update-initrd)?
  • Do I need to re-flash the board using SDK Manager in Force Recovery Mode to restore the bootloader and BSP?
  • How exactly do I enter Force Recovery Mode on Jetson Orin Nano Dev Kit? (I know there is a REC button, but please confirm the exact steps.)
  • Could this be related to HDMI output (kernel boots but no display), or is it definitely a corrupted initrd/rootfs?

Any official guidance or recovery procedure would be greatly appreciated.

4

Hi,

Could you please confirm whether your Orin Nano includes an HDMI port?
If it does, then it is likely using a custom carrier board rather than the standard developer kit, since our developer kit does not have an HDMI port.
If custom board, please contact the vendor to obtain the customized BSP.

Thanks

5

Hi,

Since you have already flashed a clean JetPack image to the SD card and the problem still persists, I would not assume that the issue is only related to the original initrd, although without logs it’s hard to say exactly what might be happening.

I would recommend trying to capture the serial console boot log if possible. You can check this wiki for more details on how to do this.

As for the Recovery Mode steps for the Orin Nano Dev Kit, you can refer to this documentation for the steps and how to verify it was successful.

Regards,

Carolina Trejos

Embedded SW Engineer at RidgeRun
Contact us: support@ridgerun.com
Developers wiki: https://developer.ridgerun.com/
Website: www.ridgerun.com