Sometimes extlinux.conf seems to be overwritten

Autonomous Machines Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Orin NX
1

Hi NVIDIA team!

I have a problem and two questions. I have noticed that in the folder /boot/extlinux/ there were two extlinux.conf* files:

  • the regular extlinux.conf that gets loaded at runtime.
  • a extlinux.conf.nv-update-extlinux-backup files that is generic, meaning without FDT or specific bootargs.

My questions are the following:

  • What is the purpose of extlinux.conf.nv-update-extlinux-backup?
  • If I change my extlinux.conf file and power cycle, can extlinux.conf.nv-update-extlinux-backup be silently copied or used by the bootloader instead of extlinux.conf?

My problem is the following:
I am under the impression that the silent copy can happen sometimes. Indeed, my Ubuntu install sometimes breaks when I modify my extlinux.conf file (even if the modification is valid), and booting using another media shows me that the content of extlinux.conf.nv-update-extlinux-backup is copied into extlinux.conf.

I am not sure of what causes this issue. Do you have any information about it?

Thank you for your help!

3

Hi,

we are checking with our developers, and will get back to you soon.

4

Hi,

I’ve checked with our developers, and I’ll summary as follows:

  1. This file will be generated when installing the nvidia-kernel debian package.
  2. It is a pure backup, and will not be used. So I think such silent copy may not happen.

Can you verify the correctness of such scenario? Sounds like it should not happen in the way you describe.

5

I am curious, would it be possible to separate out the extlinux.conf from the nvidia-kernel package? I have to agree that this probably is causing some mysterious issues at times and should not be a package, although it should be a configuration. Configurations tend to preserve customizations.

An example, on desktop PC, is:
/etc/default/grub

One can edit configuration of GRUB2 there, and although a kernel install will update the bootloader, customizations will remain. For example, the “quiet” parameter can be left out and adding a new package won’t delete that requirement. I believe there should be a similar setup in “/etc/default” for extlinux.conf rather than an absolute package content for extlinux.conf versus anything which might be customized in extlinux.conf(of course that would also mean a tool to update extlinux.conf…this is what the package currently does, although it has no customization).

7

Thank you for the answer, I still encounter the issue from time to time but I think it might be on my side.

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