Fixing the "libnvdla_compiler.so" on Jetson devices

nvidia-jetson-libnvdla_compiler-fix-instructions.md

If you, like me, just got a new Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit and are struggling to get the examples provided by Nvidia to run due to the following error:

ImportError: libnvdla_compiler.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

then you probably don't want to have to deal with downgrading the flashed version of things just to see if it will work. The issue is that the libnvdla_compiler.so file is not included in the latest (36.4.2 as of this writing) version of the Jetpack software which you're instructed to install to upgrade the firmware on the device.

The fix is to grab the file from the .deb file from the previous version. Running the following command will fix the issue:

wget -O - https://repo.download.nvidia.com/jetson/common/pool/main/n/nvidia-l4t-dla-compiler/nvidia-l4t-dla-compiler_36.4.1-20241119120551_arm64.deb | dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile - | sudo tar xv --strip-components=5 --directory=/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/nvidia/ ./usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/nvidia/libnvdla_compiler.so

You may be prompted to enter your password (or, if nothing seems to be happening, sudo may be waiting for you to enter your password), as the last command in the one-liner requires root access to copy files into the /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/nvidia/ directory.

This command will extract the required libnvdla_compiler.so file from the previous version's .deb file into the proper location in /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/nvidia/

No edits are required to the .csv files in /etc/nvidia-container-runtime/host-files-for-container.d/ - those already list the /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/nvidia/libnvdla_compiler.so path, but since the .so file doesn't exist in 36.4.2 it can't be copied in to your Docker containers.

By pulling the libnvdla_compiler.so in from the previous version, then re-running your docker or jetson-containers command, the library should be injected into the container and the error should go away.

Was having troubles building l4t-torch container from jetson-containers because of missing libnvdla_compiler.so
Pulling the libnvdla_compiler.so from the deb fixed the issue.
Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for that fix! I was facing the same issue. I can't seem to find any official channel mentioning this as a known issue which is odd. I hope it gets fixed upstream

Thank you so much!

Thank you! Model citizen and thank you for making it better for everyone else.

In case anyone's terminal hangs when running this command, type in your password and press enter, and it will complete.

Thank you !

Thanks!

Nice solution!
Thank you for the effort finding it and also sharing.

Goated for this

Thank you so much!

Worked for me, except I had to change the directory to --directory=/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/tegra/.

Is this required 20250819?

Thank a lot mate !! ;)