Unable to boot from SD Image in a Jetson Orin Nano Super Development Kit

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson Orin Nano
1

I have tried to boot my Jetson Orin Nano development kit using a SD image from a JetPack 6.2.1 iso file. It did not work for me somehow.

I got a blinking cursor on the screen after a few messages as the following.

L4TLauncher: Attempting Recovery Boot

EFI stub: Booting Linux kernel…

EFI stub: Using DTB from configuration table

…

EFI stub: Exiting boot services.

Please check attached screenshot for more details including the firmware version of my Jetson Nano.

I tried an older Jetpack 6.2, and it did not work neither.

I had my Jetson Nano installed successfully with JetPack 6.2.1 last time and configured docker on an NVMe drive until my Ubuntu got corrupted after I installed a LLM app…

This is why I tried to reimage my Jetson Nano with a SD image…

I’m curious what happened here and how I overcome this problem.

Thanks in advance for your support.

Jetson_Nano_Boot
Jetson_Nano_Boot640×295 54.3 KB

6

It works for me now after I changed the OS chain A Status (L4T Configuration) to Normal. It was set to Unbootable for some reason. Probably because the corrupted Ubuntu OS I had previously.

7

Hi qdatnguyen,

Thanks for sharing your solution — this is a great find that will help others running into the same issue.

To add some context on why this happened:

The Jetson Orin Nano stores boot configuration in QSPI firmware (a small chip soldered on the board), which is separate from the SD card. When your Ubuntu installation became corrupted, the system automatically marked the “OS chain A Status” as Unbootable in QSPI. This flag persists even after you re-image the SD card, because it lives in a different storage location — so the bootloader keeps refusing to load the OS from the new SD card.

Your fix of changing the status back to Normal in the L4T Configuration menu is exactly the right approach.

For others who may encounter this issue, here are two ways to resolve it:

1. L4T Configuration Menu (What you did)

  • Reboot and enter the L4T Configuration menu at boot
  • Change “OS chain A Status” from Unbootable to Normal
  • Save and reboot

2. Reflash via SDK Manager

  • Connect the device to a host PC via USB
  • Put the device into recovery mode
  • Use SDK Manager to reflash the full image (this will reset both QSPI and the SD card)

Recommendation: Option 1 is the quickest fix if you just need to clear the boot flag. Option 2 is useful if you want a completely clean state for both the firmware and OS.

Hope this helps!