Hi,
I found a lot of pages on the web telling how to build a usb drive that will allow the jetson nano to boot from it. GitHub - jetsonhacks/bootFromUSB: Boot NVIDIA Nano Jetson Developer Kit from a mass storage USB device (Jetson Nano devices A02, B01, 2GB and possibly Jetson TX1),
And many others.
I tried some of them, without success.
My biggest problem with these descriptions is that nothing changes into my jetson with them. I have to modify some files on the USB drive, but how can the nano finds them without having booting a bit ? And it can boot only if it finds these files… It needs a different bootloader than the current one.
On the other hand, booting on a sd card seems to be clearly out-of-date. Even a raspberry is able to boot from an usb drive.
Could someone from the Nvidia staff give a good way to reach this goal ?
Thanks
Actually the booting from sd card is same as booting from usb drive. Just with different interface.
First, please read this page. Understand what is your exact target in case you thought it wrong.
Most people take “boot from” and “mount filesystem” as same thing, but the actual process is different.
Second, prepare another x86 host which should have sdkmanager running and install the BSP already. Enable the serial console log. Otherwise it will be a blind debug. You won’t know what happened on your jetson.
Third, read this page, prepare the usb drive on your x86 host.
Hi.
Thanks for your help.
Actually, I read the first document you gave before posting my question.
I read also this very detailled document: https://docs.nvidia.com/jetson/archives/l4t-archived/l4t-3261/index.html#page/Tegra%20Linux%20Driver%20Package%20Development%20Guide/flashing.html#wwpID0E0QN0HA, as I hope finding answers in it. Unfortunately, even the beginning is confusing for me: " Before You Begin
The following directories must be present:…"
It is not specified where these directories should be? And further: " Put the target device into reset/recovery mode. 1. Power on the carrier board and hold the RECOVERY button". I can be wrong, but I haven’t found any recovery button on my jetson nano B1.
Actually, I thought that it exists somewhere a partially automated way to configure the Jetson Nano for USB booting, without any SD Card. Such things exist for a raspberry, that is not so different from the Jetson carrier board
Sincerely Yours
Then you are that user as my previous comment said. You are a total sdcard user who didn’t know our actual development tool.
Those “directories” would be downloaded by sdkmanager to your x86 ubuntu host machine.
For the board to enter recovery mode, please read the developer kit guide
Jetson nano does not have button. But only has recovery pin instead. Thus, you need to use a jumper for it.
Honestly, I would suggest follow each steps I shared. Relying on those automation tool will just lead you come back to me and tell me you cannot boot normally one day. This happened on other user before.
Hi,
I give up with the Jetson, and its very complicated way of installing software.
I spent a day trying to install an ubuntu 22 (all my servers are debian), with a screen attached (all my servers are headless or VMs). Then, I spent a whole day to reinstall the servers I modified for this test.
I have been lecturer in Computer Science in one of the top ten French schools of Electrical Engineering (my name is Henri Delebecque, and the school is Supelec, currently CentraleSupelec). And I think I never saw a so complicated software than sdk-manager. Even its command line interface is hard to explain (it takes a whole web page to describe all its options). And it is only the first step of the first step.
Nvidia is a great company for designing GPU and hardware. But its way of designing software is clearly perfectible.
Sincerely Yours
Hi,
Thanks for your help.
I tried the command-line interface of sdkmanager. But it is really too complex, asking for a lot of things when it can clearly get them directly from the jetson.
I will let the jetson sleeping, and using a more usable solution.
Sincerely Yours