Setting Up Your Jetson AGX Orin After SDK Update: A Quick Guide

Getting your NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin properly configured after an SDK update can be a bit challenging. This guide walks you through the essential steps to get your development environment up and running smoothly.

Step 1: Install NVIDIA JetPack

The first thing you'll want to do is install NVIDIA JetPack, which provides all the essential libraries and tools for your Jetson:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-jetpack

You can verify the installation by checking the CUDA compiler version:

nvcc --version

Step 2: Move Your Home Directory to SSD

If you've added a PCIe Gen3 SSD to your Jetson, moving your home directory there will significantly improve performance. While Ubuntu's official guide suggests a complex process, there's a simpler approach:

1. Format and mount your SSD to a temporary location
2. Copy your home directory to the SSD
3. Update /etc/fstab to mount the SSD as your home directory on boot

This gives you much faster access times for your development files and personal data.

Step 3: Set Up ZSH with Oh My Zsh

Upgrade your terminal experience with ZSH and Oh My Zsh:

# Install ZSH
sudo apt install zsh

# Install Oh My Zsh
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Don't forget to copy your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH settings to your new .zshrc file to maintain compatibility with NVIDIA's tools.

Step 4: Configure SSH Server

Setting up SSH lets you work remotely on your Jetson:

# Install OpenSSH server if not already installed
sudo apt install openssh-server

# Enable and start the SSH service
sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

For security, consider configuring key-based authentication and disabling password login.

Step 5: Install Miniconda

Miniconda provides a lightweight way to manage Python environments:

# Download and run the installer
wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-aarch64.sh
bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-aarch64.sh

# Initialize for your shell
source /opt/anaconda3/bin/activate
conda init zsh

# Create your first environment
conda create -n myenv python=3.9

This makes it easy to manage different Python versions and package dependencies for various projects.

Step 6: Install Jetson Stats (jtop)

Finally, install jtop to monitor your Jetson's performance:

sudo apt install python3-pip
sudo pip3 install -U jetson-stats

Launch it with the jtop command to see real-time information about CPU/GPU usage, memory, temperature, and more.

Conclusion

With these steps completed, your Jetson AGX Orin should be ready for serious development work. The combination of SSD storage, a comfortable shell environment, remote access, flexible Python environment management, and performance monitoring tools creates an ideal base setup for AI experimentations.