How to flash NVIDIA Jetson devices with Balena using WSL2 and Docker

Willem Remie — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 08:22:44 +0000

This post will show you how to flash NVIDIA Jetson devices (such as Nano, Xavier NX) with WSL2.

Prerequisites:

Your Windows system is running WSL2 as explained in following guide.
Install Docker Desktop for Windows
Balena account.

Install usbipd-win

Install usbipd-win package by opening a PowerShell window and running following command.

winget install usbipd

Subsequently, open a (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) WSL2 window and install the user space tools by running

sudo apt install linux-tools-virtual hwdata
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/local/bin/usbip usbip `ls /usr/lib/linux-tools/*/usbip | tail -n1` 20

Download Balena image for Jetson

Download a version of a Balena image from a specific fleet of devices and copy the image to WSL2.

Attach Jetson device to WSL2

Before a Jetson device can be flashed it has to be in force recovery mode. Once in force recovery, connect the your Jetson device with an USB cable. Open a PowerShell window and run following command. It will list all the USB devices connected to Windows.

> usbipd wsl list
BUSID VID:PID    DEVICE                           STATE
1-1   046d:c534  USB Input Device                 Not attached
1-2   0955:7f21  APX                              Not attached

Note the VID:PID of the APX Device, replace and run following command

usbipd wsl attach --auto-attach --hardware-id 0955:7f21

Open a WSL2 window and run lsusb in the command window. The device is attached to WSL2 and ready to be flashed.

Flash Device

Clone docker-jetson-flash in the same WSL2 folder as the unzipped image and run following command after replacing <BALENA.IMG> by the appropriate image name.

./djetson-flash -m jetson-nano-emmc -f ../<BALENA.IMG> -p