[HOW-TO ] retrOSMCmk2: a RetroPie installer on the Vero4K

HowTo
124

Hey @hissingshark … hope the following has an easy enough solution.

I launched RetroPie yesterday, and when Emulation Station loaded, the resolution was off, cutting a load of content off-screen, both in the GUI and when running the emulators. I got the resolution sorted and things look OK now, but I somehow managed to knock Emu Station into Kiosk mode in the process.

Firstly, I edited the emulationstation es_settings.cfg file and changed from ‘kiosk’ to ‘full’, rebooted, but I don’t see any changes in the Emu Station options; the menu still only shows Audio options and Quit. The edited file is persistent.

Additionally, I found that all the RetroPie menu options within Emu Station aren’t working. Each one goes to a black screen briefly, before fading back to the RetroPie menu. I did see 3 (I think) error messages that disappeared before I could read fully, but I think it said something like the rp module was missing.

So, back to Putty, and I reinstalled RetroPie from retrOSMCmk2, which seemed to complete, but when reaching the end of the installation, the message re: choosing ‘Manage RetroPie’ from the next menu’ shows but the installer then shows a dialogue “Installation Complete: The launcher addon for Kodi has been updated in place - no further action required”. I am unable to proceed from this message, as some code loads behind/above the menu, which mentions connecting to raw.githubusercontent.com/hissingshark/RetroPie-Setup but hangs there (I have to quit the Putty session).

When running RetrOSMCmk2, if I choose RetroPie-Setup, I’m just looped back to the same/first menu.

So I’m left unable to run the RetroPie-setup, access the RetroPie menu options, or Emulation Stations menus. The emulators are still running fine.

I’m sure there’ll be a really straightforward/obvious solution, and thank you in advance!

125

  1. Any idea what triggered your original overscan issues? Presumably something had changed e.g an update, other software, new TV etc. When did you last have it working? It would be good to understand that.

  2. What did you do to fix the overscan in ES and the emulators?

  3. Unclear how you ended up in kiosk mode through the above, but ES uses ~/.emulationstation as well as /etc/emulationstation to hold configs. Is it possible you have 2 conflicting files? Failing that, you can exit Kiosk or Kid mode from within ES. You enter “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A” from your controller.

  4. The Retro setup is a trinity of Kodi Addon, retrOSMCmk2 scripts and the contained RetroPie-Setup scripts. It’s possible in your move to fix things you’ve got things out of sync. I intend to remove that possibility in a future update so updating 1 will force an update of all. As it’s unclear what is broken now, you could make a clean sweep but without removing the actual emulators:
    a) Uninstall the addon via the Kodi addons menu;
    b) Delete the retrOSMCmk2 folder;
    c) Delete the “scripts” folder in the RetroPie folder;
    d) Stop the background service with sudo systemctl stop app-switcher
    e) Re-install with:

cd
git clone https://github.com/hissingshark/retrOSMCmk2.git
cd retrOSMCmk2
sudo ./setup.sh

f) Any issues with ES, Retroarch or any core/emulator? Try updating then from the script as a newer version may be required. And of course a reboot might not go amiss at this point!

I hope some of that helps.

126

Thanks for the quick reply, @hissingshark

I’m not 100% sure, but I suspect it could have been caused by changes I made in Kodi display settings when I added a 4K projector into my system. I’ve got an HDMI switch (multiple devices in to a soundbar) and a splitter (2 way out from soundbar to TV and PJ). I was having issues with the PJ seemingly advertising 8K compatibility and something in my setup was causing image issues. So, I’ve whitelisted the correct resolutions, and set the HPD lock on. Things seem to be working fine now for watching movies with Kodi, and switching to the Apple TV, but maybe Retropie/Emulation Station couldn’t get around those settings?

There was a setting in ES (I think), prior to activating Kiosk mode, where I increased the resolution from 720p (“active”) to 1080p (“selected”). Now, come to think of it … perhaps the Kodi GUI had downgraded to 720p and that’s what was causing the issue in the first place. I didn’t check that at the time.

Entering Kiosk Mode was completely my doing … I faffed around in the ES menu while overscan was hiding some options from sight, and then hit a wrong button.

I’ll check for the 2 config files this evening. I did read about the Konami code, but couldn’t get it working (I also read that some joypads work better than others at being able to enter the code!).

Thanks for the detailed guidance. I already ran the updates for everything I was still able to (both from the script, and from Kodi where possible, and rebooted, of course :slight_smile:). Will try this approach if all else fails!

No, I don’t think so. Everything that was installed and running earlier seems to be working fine.

Thanks for your help. I’ll update this evening after work (Sunday’s a working day out here in the Middle East! :frowning:)

127

No conflicting file, but I renamed the .cfg forcing ES to generate a new one, which has resolved the ES settings menu issue. Comparing side by side, and it appears that the .cfg wasn’t working due to me setting the Kiosk value to “full” when it should have been “Full” with a capital F. Schoolboy error.

Will tackle the Retropie issue this evening.

128

I followed your guidance to a tee, but I’m still having the same issue. All of the emulators are working, but all Retropie options (from ES menu) are not loading (black screen, “rp module not defined” on screen and back to menu).

I had a look in the folders and I can see .rp files for all the menu options in the “RetroPie/retropiemenu” folder, but not able to run any of them from the menu itself.

Manage RetroPie from the retrOSMCmk2 menu is still just looping back to the same menu screen. No options available to Update dependencies/emulators etc. Have updated what I can from the script.

See image below … where I mentioned in my previous post about RetroPie installation hanging, this is what I see. Some mention of ‘virtualgamepad’ old code removal, which I see was added to the git just a few days ago … and then no further.

IMG_1462
IMG_14624032×3024 1.47 MB

129

Curious. I’m trying to reproduce this here. I shall let you know.

1 Like
130

Hey Mr Shark

I’ve been thinking recently about getting a SindenLightgun and I was wondering if this would be compatible with “retrosmcmk2”?

I’ve been looking at the documentation and it appears that the support requires specifically modified emulators to be installed from his repo, either:

OR:

(Not entirely sure which one you should use when the emulator exists on both)

And for overlays to be added to retroarch. Im pretty sure most of the setup should be compatible but I dont know what specific changes have been made to the binaries/source for “retrosmcmk2” and whether or not any emulators compiled from the lightgun repos would still work on Vero.

So can you tell me if I were to follow the setup instructions would this actually work on the Vero4k?

And/or any chance you could add the sinden lightgun support to your binaries, where this has already been added for a specific emulator?

Here is the pdf from the sinden lightgun driver software if you are curious:

https://filebin.net/boo88vaczhenx6q7/SindenLightgunDocumentationV1.03_Linux.pdf?t=yc4hfg8u

131

Hi guys
retropie is working on my vero4k but I have problem with xbox controller when I want wireless connection.

I found this solution on many forums but still doesnt work
echo ‘options bluetooth disable_ertm=Y’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/bluetooth.conf

Please help …

132

I’ve already figured it out :slight_smile:
Need to switch to 4.9 kernel

then disable_ertm=Y and xbox controller connect wireless

133

I’ve tried to break it in the same way, but I just can’t reproduce the problem,
When you try to launch one of the RetroPie menu options are any errors logged under /dev/shm/runcommand?

134

Sorry for such a lengthy delay getting back to you. I’m still no further forward. I tried manually deleting/renaming all RetroPie folders that I could find to see if that forced a different result, while preserving ROMS, BIOS and Emulators etc.

Exact same experience on installation. It hangs before getting to the stage where I can configure the setup/install the cores.

I also seem to have completely lost the RetroPie menu from ES (probably through deleting it as above, and it now not finishing the install).

Couple of videos that show the installation process, and the post-install menu that’s missing the configure option, but I don’t imagine it’ll enlighten you any further.

Installation: https://imgur.com/a/u5rsmQk
Menus: https://imgur.com/a/iJ19SV3

Is there a way to fully purge every file/config/folder that’s been installed to date, so it is truly a fresh install (without having to fully reinstall the Vero)?

Thanks again for your assistance

135

Not much to see there in the vids, but clearly something is stalling (how did you make those by the way?).

Try editing setup.sh to look like this at the top:

#!/bin/bash
                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
exec 5> debug_output.txt
BASH_XTRACEFD="5"
PS4='$LINENO: '
set -x

Run the install. Then after it fails upload the resulting log file to the OSMC paste bin (will be a bit big to be posting on here).
Then delete the log file and try running RetroPie-Setup from the menu. Upload again.

Share the links to the pastes and I’ll have a look at those.

And did you say that retrOSMCmk2/submodule contains a full RetroPie-Setup directory structure after the install is completed? Try going in there and running retropie_setup.sh directly to see if that works.

1 Like
136

I used Termius app on iPad and screen record function. I don’t have a laptop at home, so the app works well.

Thanks for the additional guidance. I’ll update again as soon as I get chance to test.

137

First of all: big fat kudos to you @hissingshark for one of the most awesome additions to the OSMC ecosystem :partying_face:

Deploying retrOSMCmk2 was like a breeze and I only have one issue that’s probably related to SDL/KMS/drm or the like, which is the reason I’d like to ask here before I move things upstream: when Amiberry gets launched the display stays dark (after the RetroPie launch window). I can tell that the game (WHDload) gets loaded successfully as audio works just fine (so this shouldn’t be a kickstart issue), I just don’t get any video output. The Amiberry config menu can also be used/displayed normally.

Note that all libretro cores I tried so far worked flawlessly, so this shouldn’t be a general rendering issue. I also made sure all packages are up2date. I even reinstalled retrOSMCmk2 to make sure the (custom?) SDL libraries are also in place. Still no video output with Amiberry.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any useful log output, eg. errors or failures in /opt/retropie/configs/amiga/amiberry/whdboot/save-data/Debugs or /dev/shm/runcommand.log /opt/retropie/emulators/amiberry/amiberry.log (needed to enable logging).

Any idea?

138

Hi,
Sorry for the delayed response. Crazy times.

I have reproduced the issue here. I’ve not run Amiberry for a long time, so I couldn’t say when this began. I’d need to compile some builds from older sources to try and determine what has triggered this, but that will take time. It may be an environment issue. Are you on the standard 3.14 kernel or testing 4.9?

139

Sorry for the delayed response. Crazy times.

So true. No worries!

I have reproduced the issue here.

That’s good.

Are you on the standard 3.14 kernel or testing 4.9?

Still on stable.

I had opened an issue in the meantime. We should probably continue there to keep this thread as concise as possible.

Cheers!

140

I have reproduced the issue here.

Just wanted to check back again. Could make any progress on this? Any way I might help?

Thanks!

141

Not yet. It’s similar but not identical to an issue when I first ported PPSSPP here.
Presently I’m building older versions to determine when things changed.

142

Ok, glad to hear you’re still at it. Highly appreciated as it would be great to see the essential Amiberry working.

Cheers!

143

It seems to be an upstream issue. There’s something ongoing that has been reported for the RPi which sounds similar enough. They froze at v3.3 on RetroPie because of it. I’ve had to go back to v3.1.3.1 for us.
I’m having issues updating the download, but I’ll report back when it’s done.