How to install NRF Command line tools on Ubuntu

FATAL ERROR: required program nrfjprog not found; install it or add its location to PATH

If this error looks familiar to you, probably after installing zephyr and setting west environment you forget about last step which is nrf tools. In this article I will show you how to manually install „nRF Command Line Tools” on linux systems. The nRF Command Line Tools is a necessary tool for development, programming and debugging of Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF51, nRF52, nRF53 and nRF91 Series devices. It includes a few components:

• nrfjprog executable – tool for programming through SEGGER J-LINK programmers and debuggers
• mergehex executable – enables you to combine up to three .HEX files into one single file
• nrfjprog DLL – a DLL that exports functions for programming and controlling nRF51, nRF52, nRF53 and nRF91 Series devices and lets developers create their own development tools using the DLLs API
• SEGGER J-Link software and documentation pack

This software is available for all platforms: Windows, Linux and macOS. Unfortunately installation on Linux is not as simple as running .exe file on a Windows machine, but don’t worry, in this article I will show you step-by-step instructions on how to do that. Let’s get started

1. First step is to go to the Nordic Semiconductors webpage https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-tools/nRF-Command-Line-Tools/Download?lang=en#infotabs where you can find more information about nRF Command Line Tools
2. Go to the section „Downloads„, select your Linux system version and save .tar.gz file
3. Open terminal and go to the downloaded file. In my case, /home/downloads. Copy downloaded file to the /opt¹ directory
   Note that the version provided in this article examples is older that your, so check your version and use correct file name.

sudo cp /home/downloads/nrf-command-line-tools-10.24.2_linux-amd64.tar /opt/

4. Go to the /opt directory and extract the downloaded archive

cd /opt
sudo tar -xzf nrf-command-line-tools-10.24.2_linux-amd64.tar.gz

5. Install JLink
   • go to https://www.segger.com/downloads/jlink and download proper version
   • Install deb package

cd /home/downloads/
sudo dpkg -i JLink_Linux_V798g_X86_64.deb

6. Follow the instructions to create links into /usr/local/bin, so you can run installed programs from every place

cd /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /opt/nrf-command-line-tools/bin/nrfjprog /usr/local/bin/nrfjprog
sudo ln -s /opt/nrf-command-line-tools/bin/mergehex /usr/local/bin/mergehex

7. Go back to $HOME and check if you can run nrfjprog and mergehex

nrfjprog --version
mergehex --version

NOTES:

1. The „/opt” directory is a designated location for optional software installations, separating them from the core operating system components ↩︎

SOURCES:

• https://torun4ever.com/zephyr-install-ubuntu-20-04/
• https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-tools/nRF-Command-Line-Tools/Download?lang=en#infotabs

TROUBLESHOOTING:

• If you run into problem with JLinkARM DLL library „ERROR: JLinkARM DLL load failed. Try again. If it keeps failing, please reinstall latest JLinkARM from Segger webpage”. Make sure you follow