Provision

This guide will walk you through the process of provisioning an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano using the Avocado CLI. For general information on provisioning, see the provisioning reference.

Prerequisites

• NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
  • An NVMe SSD (M.2 2280 form factor)
• Host machine
  • Ubuntu 22.04+ or Fedora 39+ per reliable provisioning
  • Support for binfmt_misc and qemu-user-static
  • 16 GB available disk space
  • The latest version of the Avocado CLI
• Accessories
  • A host-compatible-USB to 3.3 V TTY UART adapter for serial console access
  • A host-compatible-USB to USB-C cable for provisioning

Connect GPIO

Locate the horizontal GPIO pins beneath the module on the topside of the carrier board:

• Boot into recovery mode:
  • yellow: short FC REC to GND
• Connect your serial console adapter to the target device:
  • green: GND to adapter UART GND
  • blue: UART TXD to adapter UART RX
  • violet: UART RXD to adapter UART TX

Connect to the serial console with a program like tio:

Host machine

tio -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0
[03:26:54.521] tio 3.9
[03:26:54.521] Press ctrl-t q to quit
[03:26:54.521] Warning: Could not open /dev/ttyUSB0 (No such file or directory)
[03:26:54.521] Waiting for tty device..

Replace /dev/ttyUSB0 with the appropriate device path for your serial adapter.

Connect USB

Connect the target device USB C to a host machine USB.

Verify the target device is detected via USB only after having powered it, for example:

Host machine

lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 035: ID 0403:6001 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT232 Serial (UART) IC
Bus 002 Device 060: ID 0955:7523 NVIDIA Corp. APX

The NVIDIA entry in the list of USB devices showing up after powering the device indicates it is connected to the host machine.

Create project

Create the project directory and install dependencies.

Host machine

avocado init --target jetson-orin-nano-devkit jetson-orin-nano-devkit && cd jetson-orin-nano-devkit
avocado install --force

Provision

Build the project and execute the provisioning procedure. This will build the system image and flash it to your target hardware.

Host machine

avocado build
avocado provision -r dev --provision-profile tegraflash

The procedure will advance through a few steps:

== Step 1: Signing binaries at 2025-10-13T12:18:56+00:00 ==
...
== Step 2: Boot Jetson via RCM at 2025-10-13T12:19:27+00:00 ==
...
== Step 3: Sending flash sequence commands at 2025-10-13T12:19:41+00:00 ==
...

During step 3, you will need to disconnect and reconnect the USB C cable from the target device.

Wait till you see:

The Jetson device is waiting for USB disconnect to proceed.
Please manually disconnect and reconnect the USB cable now.

Steps:
  1. Unplug the USB-C cable from the Jetson device
  2. Wait 2-3 seconds
  3. Plug the USB-C cable back in

Press Enter after reconnecting the USB cable...

Then do as it instructs, which will advance to step 4:

== Step 4: Writing partitions on external storage device at 2025-10-13T12:23:11+00:00 ==

Wait until you see:

== Step 5: Waiting for final status from device at 2025-10-13T12:27:40+00:00 ==
Waiting for USB storage device flashpkg from 52e6d9b7.......

Once you see the above, perform the same reconnection procedure:

1. Unplug the USB-C cable from the Jetson device
2. Wait 2-3 seconds
3. Plug the USB-C cable back in

This will allow the provisioning process to complete:

[SUCCESS] Successfully provisioned runtime 'dev'

1. Remove power from the target device
2. Remove the jumper shorting FC REC to GND to prevent the device from booting into recovery mode
3. Remove the USB C cable from the target device
4. Leave the serial console adapter connected

Run

Apply power to the device. The device will boot with the provisioned system. The root user is passwordless in the dev runtime used by this guide.