Will Xu's Blog

How to install NVIDIA JetPack SDK on Jetson AGX Xavier using virtual machine on MacOS?

Some preparations are required to be done first:

• A virtual machine with Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (Bionic Beaver)
• SDK Manager downloaded from NVIDIA JetPack website

Next, install the SDK Manager on Ubuntu using command in terminal:

1sudo dpkg -i sdkmanager_0.9.14-4964_amd64.deb

If error occurs in the step, we could fix the broken installation by running:

1sudo apt --fix-broken install

Now we can start the sdkmanager by running:

1/usr/bin/sdkmanager

It pops up a window like the following:

Before start, we need to prepare the Jetson AGX Xavier device:

• Power off the Xavier developer kit;
• Connect a mouse, keyboard and display to the Xavier developer kit;
• Connect Xavier to host machine (macbook), make sure the usb cable is connected from the Front USB Type-C connector (according to the User Guide, only the FRONT USB connector can be used for flashing purpose);
• Configure virtual machine to allow NVIDIA AGX USB device to be connected to Ubuntu;
• If opencv related libraries were already installed on Ubuntu, please remove all of them;

Now we can start the Xavier developer kit in Force Recovery Mode to enable the installer to flash system image to the Jetson device:

• Press and hold down the Force Recovery button (the one in the middle),
• Press and hold donw the Power button
• Release both buttons

Then we switch back to the SDK Manager window, and click the biggest start button. Waiting for the Flash Jetson OS step finish.

If the last step succeed without trouble, the Xavier device will be booted into a ubuntu system. Now we can use the connected mouse and keyboard to configure it, set username, password and click next all the way.

The Jetson OS is successfully installed now.

Next the Jetson SDK Manager wants to install SDK Components like CUDA Toolkit, cuDNN, TensorRT, OpenCV, NVIDIA Container Runtime, etc. It will pop up a dialog asking the IP address and username/password of Xavier developer kit.

Since we are using a Ubuntu host in virual machine, we might get trouble connecting to Xavier via Ethernet over USB. But don't worry, we can connect our Xavier to a router, and configure a LAN address for it. Then we can fill the dialog with ip address and username/password of Xavier, and click next to install SDK Components.

The rest is waiting for installation to finish.