Move Jetson Nx from eMMC Memory to external SSD card

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Xavier NX
1

We have a Jetson Nx with the 16 GB eMMC 5.1 memory, which is flashed and booting to Ubuntu 18.04. The issue is that this does is not enough storage for our needs.

We would like to boot instead from an external SD card, which would be inserted on a slot provided by our vendors external board (not an Nvidia board).

How can I set up the board to boot from that SD card, and not to boot from the eMMC memory ? I have flashed the SD card with the Nvidia SD card image (as I would have done for an SD card on an Nvidia dev kit board), and booted, but it boots to the eMMC still.

2

I believe the production eMMC does not have SD card ability, but you could use other external boot devices (e.g., USB hard drive might do the job). The SD card image will not work with a production module. For external boot content on the eMMC the boot-related content would still need to be on eMMC, but the rootfs could be on other media.

If it turns out that you have a specific subdirectory with a lot of data, then it is so much easier to just mount a partition there compared to booting from other media. For example, most CUDA-related content is in “/usr/local”, and mounting a thumb drive or SATA drive over “/usr/local” is trivial. Switching to the entire rootfs being on external media is non-trivial.

3

The default cboot does not support external sdcard slot added by your vendor. What you can do is let the file system mounted on the sd. It is different from “boot from sd”.

4

Hi WayneWWW,

Thanks for the link, I have read through the link provided and I have a few questions. For further context, we are trying to boot from an NVMe SSD (or at least, mount it as the rootfs).

The guide I am following is " Flashing to an NVMe Drive" at : https://docs.nvidia.com/jetson/l4t/index.html#page/Tegra%20Linux%20Driver%20Package%20Development%20Guide/flashing.html#wwpID0E0WN0HA

Under this heading there is a link to flashing using initrd, and another subheading with “To set up an NVMe drive manually for booting”.

Can you confirm if that manual method is valid for jetpack 4.6? That we may use it in place of the linked initrd method ? From reading the initrd method, it seems more complex than the manual method , requiring the installation of secureboot and jetpack on the host PC as well.

5

To clarify/extend on the post above:

Is the following link a valid method of flashing the device to be able to boot from the SSD :

7

That should be fine as it’s from our partner, you can get it a try.

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