​
Overview

SkyCore includes a drive flashing feature that writes Jetson images to target devices. The flash command can download SkyHub’s published images or use images stored locally.
You only need this to prepare a blank drive. To put SkyCore on a board that already runs JetPack, follow Set up your drone.
With the flash functionality, you can:
  • Download SkyHub’s published Jetson images
  • Flash images to a target device such as an SSD or NVMe drive
  • Restore previously created backups made with the clone command
  • Maintain proper partition structure and filesystem types
  • Create bootable drives for Jetson Orin devices

​
Requirements

  • SkyCore installed on the computer you flash from (see Set up your drone). The installer also installs partclone and the AWS CLI
  • Root privileges (sudo)
  • Internet connection, to download a published image. No AWS account is needed
  • Target storage device (SSD/NVMe)

​
Basic Usage

Where TARGET_DEVICE is the device you want to flash (e.g., /dev/sdb or /dev/nvme1n1).
The flashing process erases all data on the target device. Make sure you have selected the correct device and backed up any important data.

​
Command Line Options

​
Examples

Download and flash a published image:
Without --image, it asks which image to flash:
Pick 1 for a Jetson Orin Nano drone. Download a specific image from your own S3 bucket:
Use a local archive created by the clone command:
Use a directory with extracted partition images:

​
Flashing Process

When you run the flash command, the following steps are performed:
  1. The tool checks the options and that the target is a block device
  2. If downloading, the image is downloaded to /tmp/skycore-orion-flash (or reused if already there)
  3. The archive is extracted to a temporary directory
  4. Any mounted partitions on the target device are identified and unmounted
  5. The partition table is restored to the target device
  6. Each partition image is restored to the correct partition with the appropriate filesystem type
  7. Compressed images (.gz or .lz4) are automatically decompressed during restoration
Before it writes anything it shows WARNING: All data on <device> will be permanently lost! and asks you to confirm with y. When it is done, power off the Jetson, install the flashed drive, and power it on.

​
Troubleshooting

Cannot access target device — Error: Target device /dev/XXX does not exist or is not a block device. Make sure the target device is correctly connected and recognized by the system. Use lsblk to list available block devices. No partition images found — Error: No partition image files found in the source. Verify that the archive or directory contains valid partition images with the expected naming format (jetson_nvme_p*.img*). Download fails — Failed to download the image <image> from <bucket>. Check the internet connection, and the bucket and image name if you set them. Published images are downloaded without AWS credentials. AWS CLI missing — The aws CLI is needed to download from S3 (apt-get install awscli), or flash from a local copy with --archive or --input. Run the SkyCore install command again (it installs the AWS CLI), or flash from a local archive. No partition table — Error: Partition table file not found in the extracted archive. The archive is incomplete or was not made with skycore clone. Use a complete clone archive or a published image. Permission denied — This script must be run as root Run the command with sudo privileges.