I had just gotten various containers set up and working, then I ran apt update && apt upgrade outside of a container and it got around 80% of the way through then crashed and now it won’t boot. Just lost days of setup work.
Here’s the last thing I saw:
Setting up nvidia-l4t-bootloader (38.2.2-20250925153837) …
3834–0008–1–jetson-agx-thor-devkit-
TNSPEC 3834-400-0008-G.5-1-1-p3834-0008-p4071-0000-nvme-
COMPATIBLE_SPEC 3834–0008–1–jetson-agx-thor-devkit-
TEGRA_BOOT_STORAGE nvme0n1
TEGRA_CHIPID 0x26
TEGRA_OTA_BOOT_DEVICE /dev/mtdblock0
TEGRA_OTA_GPT_DEVICE /dev/mtdblock0
Info: Write TegraPlatformCompatSpec with 3834–0008–1–jetson-agx-thor-devkit-.
Info: The esp is already mounted to /boot/efi.
INFO. Dump slots info:
Current version: 38.2.1
Capsule update status: 1
Current bootloader slot: A
Active bootloader slot: A
num_slots: 2
slot: 0, status: normal
slot: 1, status: normal
INFO. Dump nv_boot_control.conf:
TNSPEC 3834-400-0008-G.5-1-1-p3834-0008-p4071-0000-nvme-
COMPATIBLE_SPEC 3834–0008–1–jetson-agx-thor-devkit-
TEGRA_BOOT_STORAGE nvme0n1
TEGRA_CHIPID 0x26
TEGRA_OTA_BOOT_DEVICE /dev/mtdblock0
TEGRA_OTA_GPT_DEVICE /dev/mtdblock0
Starting bootloader post-install procedure.
INFO:Kenrel cmdline: root=PARTUUID=f170289e-f6c7-4a75-a038-e81208bdcf8d rw rootwait rootfstype=ext4 mminit_loglevel=4 earlycon=tegra_utc,mmio32,0xc5a0000 console=tty0 console=ttyUTC0,115200 clk_ignore_unused firmware_class.path=/etc/firmware fbcon=map:0 nospectre_bhb efi=runtime bl_prof_dataptr=6225920@0x2008010000 bl_prof_ro_ptr=65536@0x20 bl_prof_dataptr=6225920@0x2008010000 bl_prof_ro_ptr=65536@0x2008000000
Idle…: 0%
Now I can’t even recover it by re-installing the BSP from the USB installation thumb drive. I’m using the Jetson Thor developer kit, no customizations.
It shows something like this after trying to re-install the BSP from the USB installation thumb drive:
ESC to enter Setup. F11 to enter Boot Manager Menu. Enter to continue boot. …
*** L4TLauncher: Attempting Recovery Boot*** Android image header not seen Failed to boot recovery:0 partition
Ok, now I’ve got it re-flashing from the BSP on the usb drive. But once that finishes I wind up right back at the L4tLauncher: Attempting Recovery Boot message and it won’t boot. It goes through all the boot options (my ssd is the first one) and all of them fail and then it goes in to that UEFI interactive shell and shows a mapping table. Any ideas what is wrong?
Hi @whitesscott yes, I did that and was able to get the BSP to reinstall (show all the white text on the screen etc for about 15 minutes) but even after that it just reboots to show the L4TLauncher: Attempting Recovery Boot message, then after failing to find a bootable disk, it goes to the UEFI shell.
If following is what is failing, if you have an ubuntu computer you may wish to use sdkmanager When I used usb stick I missed changing the method/efifb setting.
Power on Thor. While on the NVIDIA logo screen, hit Esc key several times to enter setup menu.
Select Device Manager by hitting up/down keys, and press Enter key.
Select NVIDIA Configuration by hitting up/down keys, and press Enter key.
Select Boot Configuration by hitting up/down keys, and press Enter key.
Scroll to the next screen by hitting down key and select SOC Display Hand-Off Mode, then press Enter key. Change the mode to Auto
Scroll to the next screen by hitting (down) key a couple times and select SOC Display Hand-Off Method and set to efifb by hitting (down) key and press Enter key.
Press F10 key to save the changes.
Press y key to confirm the change.
Press Esc key multiple times to exit to the top menu of setup menu.
Select Reset by hitting up/down keys, and press Enter key.
@whitesscott unfortunately I don’t have any x86 (ubuntu or windows) to run the sdk manager. Is there any other way to diagnose this further to see what happened or what a possible remedy is? I wish I hadn’t ran apt-update.
Sorry to hear you are facing this weird issue, I know how frustrating it is not to be able to focus on what really matters because of something that shouldn’t be so complex.
I think the apt-update might have broken some of your kernel modules and that cause the board to start failing. After that I imagine a bunch of failed USB flashing attempts might have broken your firmware further.
The SDK Manager option recommended by Scott is by far the best possible solution you could try.
Since you don’t have access to a linux machine, there are 2 paths you can take:
There is a way you can run SDK Manager on Docker and even flash your boards with it. I imagine you are using Mac, so you can give it a try: Docker Images — SDK Manager
What I usually do is, although I love my Mac for development. I have a cheap $400 laptop I got off amazon flashed with Ubuntu so I can easily flash my boards and build yocto on it. I mostly use it as a server. Could be the best option in the long run.
Please keep us posted and let us know if there is any other way we could help.
best regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova
I’ve now purchased an ubuntu machine on X86 in order to use the SDK Manager, but I can’t get the SDK manager to recognize the Thor device. I’ve tried entering forced recovery mode several times to get it to recognize, including moving to different USB C ports on the front of the Jetson (even the one under the magnetic hood). None of them allow me to recognize the Thor.
Great news. I got it up and running. The swapping the 2 usb cords was the fix. The link between the two computers needs to be the one nearest the hdmi connector. So just a 50/50 unlucky pick that cost me a bunch of hours. That should be updated in the user guide!
I’m back up and running now and I started out with the apt update && apt upgrade, rebooted and everything came up fine this time. Hopefully I was just super unlucky before.
