shell scripting topic

lostless

Just to continue this discussion. The kill run command program portion of shutdown script no longer works with retroarch in the most latest update from yesterday. Raspian files updated as well. It works with kodi. I have no other apps other than retroarch or kodi to test on. But this happened on 2 pi’s of mine so it last not a config i messes up.

So in essence. If in ES, shuts down fine. If in kodi, it exits to ES and then shuts down. If in retroarch, it just shuts down without saving meta data. Using the kill portion as a exit button. Nothing happens in retroarch, but kodi does exit.

FlashPC

Hi guys, this is only a hypothetical question. Is it possible to reset the order of the joysticks on the raspberry pi from the command line without rebooting.

As far as I know udev takes care of the js ordering. Yet emulators like Daphne only uses js0.

So can it be done where the script takes a snapshot of the udev js order, then asks you which usb device to use, then organise the list to have your desired device use the js0 slot and disable the rest. Then on the emulator exit return the udev js order to what it was.

meleu

@FlashPC You don't need to reboot to change the js* order. I think that changing the plugs is enough.

I don't know any way to set a joystick to be the js0 "on-the-fly" (keeping all of them connected). I've read something about using udev rules to set a specific controller to be the js0, but I'm afraid it isn't possible to change it on-the-fly.

By the way, I've wrote a script to let the user choose which controller to use for RetroArch players 1-4, but it works only for RetroArch emulators/cores.

FlashPC

@meleu the retroarch joystick selector is sweet, and it works great with the retroarch cores.

I did read somewhere that it might be possible to kill the udev process, and change the udev rules but that was using red hat linux I think....

meleu

@cyperghost let's bring this to our nerdy thread :-)

@cyperghost said in Hide systems/consoles and only show "all games" section:

@EctoOne you're right. Using that symbolic link approach and removing the unwanted systems from es_systems.cfg would work too (I think).

Hmmm.... Are you sure? Where are the runcommand calls stored? Or do you create them by your custom control script?

The script I made to launch the emulator detects the system in ROM's path. The script is quite small, then I'm pasting it here:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# runcustom.sh

# testing if it's a symbolic link
if [[ ! -L "$1" ]]; then
    dialog --msgbox "ERROR: \"$1\" is not a symbolic link." 0 0
    exit 1
fi

# getting the name of the file that the symbolic link points to
rom="$(readlink "$1")"

# getting the system based on the folder the rom is stored
system="$(echo "$rom" | sed 's|\(.*/RetroPie/roms/[^/]*\).*|\1|' | xargs basename)"

# now launch runcommand normally
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ "$system" "$rom"

More details in the original post: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10849/create-a-custom-es-system-able-to-launch-games-for-many-systems

cyperghost

@meleu Yes, last line is the call command like es_systems.cfg
I'm not aware of the linking method but this should work in 99% of all time.
The method I used is to extract the whole command calls of es_systems in one file.

But both methods are hacks.... So your suggestions is really the best - use the all systems method. Maybe if the kios-mode is implented ES is supervisor-save and there is no need for such efforts :)

meleu

@hiulit Another tip for your fun-facts-script project:

Declare a variable for fun_facts.txt, set the file's full path to the variable, and use the variable when you need to reference that file.

It avoids some No such file or directory errors when you invoke the script from another directory.

Example:

~/src/funfacts $ ls
es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh*  fun_facts.txt
~/src/funfacts $ ./es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh
Mario first appeared in 1981 as the playable character in Nintendo's arcade game Donkey Kong. However, he was a carpenter known only as Jumpman
~/src/funfacts $ # THE SCRIPT RUNS FINE
~/src/funfacts $ cd ..
~/src $ ./funfacts/es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh
shuf: fun_facts.txt: No such file or directory

EDIT

This is the best method I've found to detect the script's dir:

readonly SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")" && pwd)"

if your fun_facts.txt is in the same file as the script, then you can just add the following line right after the SCRIPT_DIR definition:

readonly FUN_FACTS_TXT="$SCRIPT_DIR/fun_facts.txt"

hiulit

@meleu Thank you! Done! Works perfectly :D
Could you elaborate on how $(cd "$(dirname "$0") works? What does $0 mean? Thanks again!

hiulit

I found that if I specify a font when using convert it decreases the image creation time, like a lot!
It also depends on the sentence's length. But when specifying a font I get pretty good results with a 3 line sentence :O

real 0m3.338s
user 0m2.472s
sys  0m0.824s

compared to:

real 1m3.849s
user 0m12.148s
sys  0m1.024s

meleu

@hiulit said in shell scripting topic:

Could you elaborate on how $(cd "$(dirname "$0") works? What does $0 mean?

$0 is a positional parameter where the string you used to call the script is stored. More info about positional parameters can be found here (by the way, this doc has valuable info about bash scripting).

Now let me elaborate why I think that one-liner to get the script dir is a good way to go...

To ilustrate let's consider that the script was invoked from a different directory than the one where the script is placed. Let's consider the scenario I used as example on my post above, where I am calling the your script with this line:

prompt$  ./funfacts/es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh

Now I'm going to break down this variable definition line (skipping the parts that I think you already know):

readonly SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")" && pwd)"

$0 results in ./funfacts/es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh
dirname "./funfacts/es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh" results in./funfacts
cd "./funfacts" && pwd results in /FULL/PATH/TO/src/funfacts

I hope I was clear. :)

EDIT: if you want an extremely detailed and strong way to get the script's dir, take a look here: http://www.ostricher.com/2014/10/the-right-way-to-get-the-directory-of-a-bash-script/

It's a bit overkill for such a single task, but I would like to let the link here for future references. :)

hiulit

Hey, thanks again! It's crystal clear.

hiulit

For the fun facts splashscreens project I want to know which theme is currently active in EmulationStation and its font.

Here's what I'm doing:

function get_current_theme() {
    grep "name=\"ThemeSet\"" "$home/.emulationstation/es_settings.cfg" | sed -n -e "s/^.*value=['\"]\(.*\)['\"].*/\1/p"
}

function get_theme_font() {
    xmlstarlet sel -t -v "/theme/view[contains(@name,'detailed')]/textlist/fontPath" "$ES_DIR/themes/$current_theme/$current_theme.xml" 2> /dev/null
}

It's working but I don't know if it's the right way to do it.

Acutally, get_theme_font() is taken from @meleu 's generate-launching-imagesso I guess it should be ok :P

meleu

@hiulit I think they are just fine. Maybe get_current_theme() can be tweaked a little to be an one-liner sed. But as this is a small script, it's fine to keep it as is.

Another little thing I noticed is regarding that Regular Expression in the sed line. You don't need to explicitly match "start of the line followed by anything" (this is what ^.* means).

Also, I think we can tweak get_theme_font() in order to let it get the font for an arbitrary theme (defined by the user).

cyperghost

@hiulit said in shell scripting topic:

I found that if I specify a font when using convert it decreases the image creation time, like a lot!
It also depends on the sentence's length. But when specifying a font I get pretty good results with a 3 line sentence :O

That was my first suggestion. But convert gots 2 caveeats

It needs ghostscript (I'm unsure if caption needs it)
You have to set correct position
(It needs the font you call)

... but it's faster than just use captions because it's independent of the images you merge but it's your turn to set coordinates ;)

@meleu It's always a pleasure to see you in action ;)

meleu

@hiulit said in Fun Facts Splashscreens:

@meleu When I encountered the problem with Pixel theme and xmlstarlet I tried a different approach for finding the font.
function get_theme_font() {
    get_current_theme
    if [[ -n "$(find "$ES_DIR/themes/$current_theme/art" -type f -name '*.ttf')" ]]; then
        font="$(find "$ES_DIR/themes/$current_theme/art" -type f -name '*.ttf')"
    else
        font=$DEFAULT_FONT
    fi
}
I did the job, but I wasn't happy about repeating the find function , but I don't know any better :P

Do you think that could be a workaround for finding theme fonts?

I know that some themes can have multiple fonts but I think it's ok to use the first one found.

3 notes about the code above:

you should use that font="$(find...)" before the if and then if [[ -n "$font" ]] (optmization)
maybe using find can be a good approach but only after the current method fail. Also that find command needs more tweaking... Look the files at ComicBook/art directory for example. There are more than one .ttf file. Then we can make the find get only the first match. You did a good catching here! ;)
that line with font=$DEFAULT_FONT... Man, memorize one thing for you shell script coder life: unless you have a really good reason, ALWAYS DOUBLE QUOTE YOUR VARIABLES. If you want an extensive (and a bit boring) explanation for that, you can read it here

I'm on my lunch time now. I'll try to eat something and then send another PR.

Cheers!

cyperghost

@meleu @hiulit Maybe annother point of view but maybe if the theme name is already extracted why not just search for *.ttf-files and use results as match and then do use just a simple grep alongside the xml to get a match ;)

meleu

@cyperghost as far as I understood @hiulit wants specifically the font used in detailed view. At least that's what that xmlstarlet command is getting.

@hiulit submitted another PR: https://github.com/hiulit/es-fun-facts-splashscreens/pull/2

cyperghost

@meleu Ah okay approved. But I think a generic solution is hard to find - so it's nice to have the fallback option to use Carbon-fonts :)

hiulit

Well, actually, I used the same line @meleu is using in his generate-launching-images.sh:P See:

https://github.com/meleu/generate-launching-images/blob/c55e61ee0066438068cf5b72c62430337bb1e3d5/generate-launching-images.sh#L416

xml_path="/theme/view[contains(@name,'detailed')]/textlist/fontPath"

I don't know if we could have a more "standard" search function for fonts, because some themes have different fonts and it would be difficult to know which one is the "primary" font. I'm not into EmulationStation theming so I don't know if there's a predominant font that we could use.

Also, @cyperghost , if I understood you correctly, you though about searching for the font based on the theme's name? (e.g Pixel theme -> pixel.ttf)
Because, for what I see, there isn't a "standardized" naming convention on font naming for themes.
The default to Carbon's font it's nice, yeah! ;)

hiulit

I would like to try to run Fun Facts Splashscreens on system's shutdown (or startup) but I don't have any clue about where to start looking. Any hint?

I've been looking at this thread https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4836/emulationstation-shutdown-script/ and I've been able to add a line in /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/emulationstation.sh to launch es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh and it works, but I don't think this is right place to do it nor the way to do it.

The place isn't right because, I think, the script should run either on system's startup or shutdown, as @Zigurana mentioned, not when EmulationStation starts, restarts or shutdowns. It doesn't make sense, because the splashscreens shows before EmulationStation starts.

And the way to do it isn't right because I don't like that, for this script to be launched, you have to edit some "core" files.

Is there any way to launch a script either on system's startup or shutdown?