Can't flash Jetson AGX Developer kit in recovery mode

I am trying to flash a balena-os/balena-jetson image I built to the Jetson AGX Developer kit.
I am using balena-os/jetson-flash tool as follows:

                    #~/jetson-flash$ bin/cmd.js -f balena.img -m jetson-xavier               
                    Consistency check done for /tmp/14352/Linux_for_Tegra                                                                                                                              
                    Saved in /tmp/14352                                                                                                                                                                
                    Successfully generated hash                                                                                                                                                        
                    Checking resin cache                                                                                                                                                               
                    Cache image check done                                                                                                                                                             
                    Extracting partition kernel from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                          
                    Extracting partition kernel_b from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                        
                    Extracting partition kernel-dtb from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                      
                    Extracting partition kernel-dtb_b from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                    
                    Extracting partition resin-boot from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                      
                    Extracting partition resin-rootA from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                     
                    Extracting partition resin-rootB from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                     
                    Extracting partition resin-state from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                     
                    Extracting partition resin-data from /tmp/14352/resin/img to /tmp/14352/resin                                                                                                      
                    Successfully generated hash                                                                                                                                                        
                    ###############################################################################                                                                                                    
                    # L4T BSP Information:                                                                                                                                                             
                    # R32 , REVISION: 4.2                                                                                                                                                              
                    ###############################################################################                                                                                                    
                    **Error: probing the target board failed.                                                                                                                                            **

** Make sure the target board is connected through **
** USB port and is in recovery mode.**

I have tried both the jetson-xavier target as well as the jetson-xavier-nx-devkit-emmc - same problem with both.

I am quite positive the dev kit is in recovery mode as I followed the instructions and

  • the light indicating recovery mode is on
  • the device shows up in ‘lsusb’ as
    Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0955:7019 NVIDIA Corp. APX
  • dmesg indicates the detection of the device
    [ 1801.693222] usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
    [ 1801.842262] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0955, idProduct=7019, bcdDevice= 1.02
    [ 1801.842267] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
    [ 1801.842271] usb 1-2: Product: APX
    [ 1801.842274] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: NVIDIA Corp.
  • I am using the provided usb cable plugged into the specified usb port (next to the led)

I have successfully used the same version of balena-os/jetson-flash tool to flash the same image to the Connect Tech Rogue AGX Dev Kit https://connecttech.com/product/rogue-carrier-nvidia-jetson-agx-xavier/
Of course the image is not correct for that carrier board BUT it flashed and booted at least.

The only similar thread in these forums I found was here: Flashing Jetson TX2 via USB
There the commenter sees the same output that I do and it appears they edit one of the xml files and the issue goes away.

Error: probing the target board failed.
Make sure the target board is connected through
USB port and is in recovery mode.
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash$ cd workdir/
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash/workdir$ ls
jetson-flash-artifacts
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash/workdir$ cd jetson-flash-artifacts/
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash/workdir/jetson-flash-artifacts$ sudo nano flas^C
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash/workdir/jetson-flash-artifacts$ cd resin/
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash/workdir/jetson-flash-artifacts/resin$ sudo nano flash.xml
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash/workdir/jetson-flash-artifacts/resin$ cd …
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash/workdir/jetson-flash-artifacts$ cd …
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash/workdir$ cd …
max@Ritter:~/jetson-flash$ sudo ./bin/cmd.js -p -o ./workdir/ -m jetson-nano-emmc -f balena_dev.img

Please advise.

Hi @jpk

From the logs it seems the tegra flashing tools are not able to detect the board. Does flashing the bootloaders using flash.sh from the BSP archive work with your board?

You can try by downloading the L4T Driver Package (BSP) , in it you will find the flash.sh script and run:
sudo ./flash.sh jetson-xavier mmcblk0p1

Thank you for your reply. I managed to resolve the issue last night.
After rebooting, unplugging the uart cable and trying 3 times I was able to flash th e board.
Perhaps getting into forced recovery mode is a little trickier than I imagined.

I was under the impression that if I saw
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0955:7019 NVIDIA Corp. APX
in lsusb then the device was in forced recovery mode but that doesn’t seem to be the case.