This article covering how to change the NVidia Jetson modules partition layout using yocto + meta-tegra layer, and is basically a summary of this issue. Big thank to Matt Madison!
After the default image build, the partition layout for each device can be found in tmp/work-shared/L4T-native-tegra186-32.2.0-r0/Linux_for_Tegra/bootloader/*/cfg
For TX2, make a copy of tmp/work-shared/L4T-native-tegra186-32.2.0-r0/Linux_for_Tegra/bootloader/t186ref/cfg/flash_l4t_t186.xml and name it to something else, i.e: flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml
Read https://docs.nvidia.com/jetson/archives/l4t-archived/l4t-282/index.html#page/Tegra%2520Linux%2520Driver%2520Package%2520Development%2520Guide%2Fpart_config_tx2.html and make the wanted modifications into flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml to understand the different tags, and make the modifications you need.
Next you need to tell bitbake to use the new flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml instead of flash_l4t_t186.xml and this is done by setting PARTITION_LAYOUT_TEMPLATE variable. It is defined in the MACHINE configuration for machines declared in meta-tegra or your custom ones.
Example for meta-tegra/conf/machine/jetson-tx2.conf:
#@TYPE: Machine
#@NAME: Nvidia Jetson TX2
#@DESCRIPTION: Nvidia Jetson TX2 dev board
require conf/machine/include/tegra186.inc
KERNEL_DEVICETREE ?= "_ddot_/_ddot_/_ddot_/_ddot_/nvidia/platform/t18x/quill/kernel-dts/tegra186-quill-p3310-1000-c03-00-base.dtb"
KERNEL_ARGS ?= "console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 OS=l4t fbcon=map:0"
MACHINE_FEATURES += "ext2 ext3 vfat"
UBOOT_MACHINE = "p2771-0000-500_defconfig"
EMMC_SIZE ?= "31276924928"
EMMC_DEVSECT_SIZE ?= "512"
BOOTPART_SIZE ?= "8388608"
BOOTPART_LIMIT ?= "10485760"
ROOTFSPART_SIZE ?= "30064771072"
ODMDATA ?= "0x1090000"
EMMC_BCT ?= "P3310_A00_8GB_Samsung_8GB_lpddr4_204Mhz_A02_l4t.cfg"
NVIDIA_BOARD ?= "t186ref"
PARTITION_LAYOUT_TEMPLATE ?= "flash_l4t_t186.xml"Code language: Bash (bash)I didn’t want to modify the original machine definition file, so I opted for adding an include in my distro layer configuration file
include conf/machine/${MACHINE}-extra.confCode language: Bash (bash)If you don’t have your own distro layer, you can add this to your local.conf file.
Then in your layer add conf/machine/jetson-tx2-extra.conf with
PARTITION_LAYOUT_TEMPLATE = "flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml"Code language: Bash (bash)Now you need to make bitbake fetch flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml and this is done by appending tegra-binaries recipe. In your layer, add …/recipes-bsp/tegra-binaries
Inside create a files folder and copy flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml into it.
Create tegra-binaries_32.%.bbappend
FILESEXTRAPATHS_prepend := "${THISDIR}/files:"
SRC_URI += " \
file://flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml \
"
do_preconfigure_append() {
mkdir -p ${S}/bootloader/${NVIDIA_BOARD}/cfg/
cp ${WORKDIR}/flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml ${S}/bootloader/${NVIDIA_BOARD}/cfg/
}Code language: Bash (bash)Now you can build a new image and flash the device.
Once the device boots, check the device name for the partition you are looking for with
# lsblk --f --bytes --output NAME,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,PARTLABEL,SIZE,STATE,TYPE
NAME FSTYPE MOUNTPOINT PARTLABEL SIZE STATE TYPE
mmcblk0 31268536320 disk
|-mmcblk0p1 ext4 / APP 12884901888 part
|-mmcblk0p2 mts-bootpack 4194304 part
|-mmcblk0p3 mts-bootpack_b 4194304 part
|-mmcblk0p4 cpu-bootloader 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p5 cpu-bootloader_b 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p6 bootloader-dtb 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p7 bootloader-dtb_b 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p8 secure-os 3145728 part
|-mmcblk0p9 secure-os_b 3145728 part
|-mmcblk0p10 eks 2097152 part
|-mmcblk0p11 adsp-fw 4194304 part
|-mmcblk0p12 adsp-fw_b 4194304 part
|-mmcblk0p13 bpmp-fw 618496 part
|-mmcblk0p14 bpmp-fw_b 618496 part
|-mmcblk0p15 bpmp-fw-dtb 512000 part
|-mmcblk0p16 bpmp-fw-dtb_b 512000 part
|-mmcblk0p17 sce-fw 2097152 part
|-mmcblk0p18 sce-fw_b 2097152 part
|-mmcblk0p19 sc7 6291456 part
|-mmcblk0p20 sc7_b 6291456 part
|-mmcblk0p21 FBNAME 2097152 part
|-mmcblk0p22 BMP 134217728 part
|-mmcblk0p23 BMP_b 134217728 part
|-mmcblk0p24 SOS 33554432 part
|-mmcblk0p25 SOS_b 33554432 part
|-mmcblk0p26 kernel 67108864 part
|-mmcblk0p27 kernel_b 67108864 part
|-mmcblk0p28 kernel-dtb 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p29 kernel-dtb_b 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p30 CAC 268435456 part
`-mmcblk0p31 overlay 16520130048 part
mmcblk0boot0 4194304 disk
mmcblk0boot1 4194304 disk
mmcblk0rpmb 4194304 disk Code language: Bash (bash)Let say you want the partition with label ‘overlay’ to have an ext4 file partition mounted at /overlay.
In your_image.bb where you have defined your custom image, add this to create a small ext4 img file, so it won’t take long to flash the device
tegraflash_custom_pre() {
dd if=/dev/zero of=overlay.img bs=1M count=10
/sbin/mkfs.ext4 overlay.img
}Code language: Bash (bash)Now go back to edit flash_l4t_t186_custom.xml and add the image name in filename tag in the partition
<partition name="overlay" type="data">
<allocation_policy> sequential </allocation_policy>
<filesystem_type> basic </filesystem_type>
<size> 18432 </size>
<file_system_attribute> 0 </file_system_attribute>
<allocation_attribute> 0x808 </allocation_attribute>
<percent_reserved> 0 </percent_reserved>
<filename> overlay.img </filename>
</partition>Code language: XL (xl)To mount this new partition edit your fstab. Create a …/recipes-core/base-files folder. Inside add a base-files folder with fstab
/dev/root / auto defaults 1 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
tmpfs /run tmpfs mode=0755,nodev,nosuid,strictatime 0 0
tmpfs /var/volatile tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p31 /overlay auto defaults,x-systemd.growfs 0 0Code language: Bash (bash)The x-systemd.growfs option tells systemd to resize the file system on /overlay to the full size of /dev/mmcblk0p31 partition. Otherwise it’ll stay 10MB.
Then create base-files_%.bbappend to create to add the path and the mount point in the image.
FILESEXTRAPATHS_prepend := "${THISDIR}/${PN}:"
do_install_append() {
install -d ${D}/overlay
}
FILES_${PN} += " \
/overlay \
"Code language: Bash (bash)Build, flash and you should see the overlay partition:
# lsparts
NAME FSTYPE MOUNTPOINT PARTLABEL SIZE STATE TYPE
sda 128035676160 running disk
`-sda1 ext4 /data 128034676224 part
mmcblk0 31268536320 disk
|-mmcblk0p1 ext4 / APP 12884901888 part
|-mmcblk0p2 mts-bootpack 4194304 part
|-mmcblk0p3 mts-bootpack_b 4194304 part
|-mmcblk0p4 cpu-bootloader 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p5 cpu-bootloader_b 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p6 bootloader-dtb 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p7 bootloader-dtb_b 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p8 secure-os 3145728 part
|-mmcblk0p9 secure-os_b 3145728 part
|-mmcblk0p10 eks 2097152 part
|-mmcblk0p11 adsp-fw 4194304 part
|-mmcblk0p12 adsp-fw_b 4194304 part
|-mmcblk0p13 bpmp-fw 618496 part
|-mmcblk0p14 bpmp-fw_b 618496 part
|-mmcblk0p15 bpmp-fw-dtb 512000 part
|-mmcblk0p16 bpmp-fw-dtb_b 512000 part
|-mmcblk0p17 sce-fw 2097152 part
|-mmcblk0p18 sce-fw_b 2097152 part
|-mmcblk0p19 sc7 6291456 part
|-mmcblk0p20 sc7_b 6291456 part
|-mmcblk0p21 FBNAME 2097152 part
|-mmcblk0p22 BMP 134217728 part
|-mmcblk0p23 BMP_b 134217728 part
|-mmcblk0p24 SOS 33554432 part
|-mmcblk0p25 SOS_b 33554432 part
|-mmcblk0p26 kernel 67108864 part
|-mmcblk0p27 kernel_b 67108864 part
|-mmcblk0p28 kernel-dtb 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p29 kernel-dtb_b 524288 part
|-mmcblk0p30 CAC 268435456 part
`-mmcblk0p31 ext4 /overlay overlay 16520130048 part
mmcblk0boot0 4194304 disk
mmcblk0boot1 4194304 disk
mmcblk0rpmb 4194304 diskCode language: Bash (bash)And check the size matches the partition size:
# df -h
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
none 3953688 0 3953688 0% /dev
/dev/mmcblk0p1 3662748 3013736 433768 88% /
tmpfs 4024492 4 4024488 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 4024492 832 4023660 1% /run
tmpfs 4024492 0 4024492 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 4024492 0 4024492 0% /tmp
tmpfs 4024492 0 4024492 0% /var/volatile
/dev/mmcblk0p31 15811428 13 15327223 1% /overlay
tmpfs 804896 0 804896 0% /run/user/0Code language: Bash (bash)NVidia is changing the default layout with Jetpack releases and some of those are mandatory. So if you upgrade the meta-tegra layer to another branch, make sure to diff the new layout format with your custom one.