SDK Manager - Connection issues when flashing Jetson Orin Nano

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Orin Nano
1

Hello

I am trying to flash a NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano. It has no boot-loader yet. I am installing the software on the NVMe, because it has no SD card port.

I am trying to use the NVidia SDK Manager on my Ubuntu 22.04 host, but it keeps trowing me internet connection errors, such as “Failed to load the configuration file” and “No SDKs available for your account”. If I connect to a mobile hotspot, I bypass these issues, but my data plan is limited.

How can I solve this connectivity issue? I already tried rm -rf ~/.nvsdkm/, but it does not work. Also ufw is inactive.

Best regards,
Eduardo Guerra

2

Much of what you are interested in depends on the specific hardware. The Orin Nano developer kits come with an SD card slot on the module itself. Units designed by third parties will instead come with the SD card slot on the carrier board (if any), and a commercial module (which has no SD card slot on the module; it has eMMC instead). The carrier board of a third party unit often (not always) differs in layout from the developer’s kit, which is the main reason why they might use different firmware to tell the Jetson where to find various hardware.

The developer kit is somewhat difficult to see the micro SD slot under the module if you don’t know where to look. Assuming that you really don’t have an SD card slot it implies that you purchased a third party model, and that most likely it requires their software instead of the NVIDIA flash software. If this is true, then one of the following applies:

  • The third party designed a carrier board electrical layout of the carrier board which matches the dev kit; the firmware won’t differ, and the manufacturer could tell you to use NVIDIA’s software, or it might rebrand flash software.
  • The third party has a different electrical carrier board layout. In that case there is a definite change to device tree (which is firmware). Either:
    • The manufacturer will provide patch to NVIDIA’s flash software.
    • The manufacturer will provide a rebranded flash software differing mainly in device tree.

Note that during flash the software can work with many different models. That is the flash target. If your unit is identified as a third party model with significant differences to the reference design, then this might cause there to not be a proper flash target. The other reason which is possible for “no SDKs available for your account” is more about the target being flashed.

JetPack/SDK Manager itself runs on a wider range of Linux host PCs than what is available for particular flash targets. JetPack supports a lot of different NVIDIA embedded systems beyond just Jetsons. The host PC requirements are the intersection of flash target requirements and JetPack/SDKM requirements.

The L4T release is what actually gets flashed (it’s what we’d call Ubuntu after adding NVIDIA content), while JetPack/SDKM is just a front end to the flash software. Usually the L4T release is tied to the JetPack release, but JetPack can be told to look at older releases. So this leads to some questions:

  • Is this a developer’s kit, or is this a third party model which has eMMC (even if flashing to NVMe, this is important to know if it has eMMC)?
  • Which L4T release are you using? If you don’t have that information, then what is the JetPack version? If you have the Jetson’s “/etc/nv_tegra_release” file, then this will list L4T release (it is also in the flash software at “Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/etc/nv_tegra_release”).

Note that in all cases flashing for NVMe uses a different command than using default storage. This is because Jetsons don’t have an actual hardware BIOS (Thor might, not sure yet), and support for multiple boot devices only exists because it gets flashed (flashing a Jetson is more or less also flashing the BIOS every time it is flashed since they don’t have a hardware BIOS). This requires an initrd flash (the initial ramdisk acts as an adapter between the boot chain and o/s load).

3

Hi,

Thank you very much. From what you are saying, this looks like a third-party model. I thought this was sort of internet firewall issue, but your insight proved me wrong. I understand now that I probably need that third-party software package. I will ask them for directions. I will directly contact the seller for support.

Thank you for your help. This is the first time working with this sort of devices (I am not very knowledgeable in hardware), and did not know how to proceed with this.

Thank you very much.

Best regards,

Eduardo Guerra