Retropie changes not saving

zero2k

Hello I'm kind of new to this whole retropie thing. But I have a problem that just started that I can't seem to fix. I have a raspberry pi 3 running the most current version of retropie. I installed quake 3 and doom 1&2 and I also deleted a few roms and everything worked fine after restarting emulation station. But after I shutdown or restart my system the games I installed were not there anymore and the roms I deleted reappeared . I've tired redoing this a couple of times in different orders not that it mattered but got the same result. I tired googling this problem with no success. I don't have a USB drive plug in for my roms they are all on my 32 gig sd micro card. Any help with this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Clyde

@zero2k How exactly did you do the changes? (network, plugging the sd card into another computer, directly in Retropie etc.)

Were the changes reverted on the sd card or only in Emulation Station? Can you start the reappeared games?

zero2k

@clyde I tired deleting the roms two different ways first I did it by accessing my retropie from my computer through my network. I restarted emulation station and they were gone. So I shutdown retropie when I went to play it later the roms showed back up. I accessed my retropie again from my computer over my network and they were there. So the next thing I tired was deleting the roms through the file manger in retropie. Rebooted emulation station and they were gone so I restarted the system and they reappeared again. Same thing happened when I installed quake 3 and doom. I restarted emulation station and they were there. But after rebooting the system they were not there as if I didn't install them so I tired it again and same result happened.

Clyde

@zero2k That sounds very strange. Please answer my last question if you can start these "deleted" games.

To make a controlled test of file deletion, you could execute these commands in Retropie's console:

rm -v /home/pi/Retropie/roms/SYSTEM/ROMNAME
ls -l /home/pi/Retropie/roms/SYSTEM/ROMNAME

Replace SYSTEM/ROMNAME with the system directory and rom filename in both commands, e.g. arcade/zaxxon.zip or nes/pacman.zip. Show us the output of both commands here in a code block (see http://commonmark.org/help/ how to make a code block).

The first command deletes the rom file and the second command shows if it's really deleted. If the ls command says that it "cannot access" the deleted rom file, reboot and enter only the ls command again. It should again say that it cannot access the (hopefully still deleted) rom file.

Be very careful with the rm command, because it deletes the file you tell it to delete without asking you if you really want do it, in contrast to many graphical programs.

By the way, you mean "tried", not "tired". At first, I thought that you wanted to say that you're tired of trying. ;)

zero2k

@clyde Okay I tried starting those games i want to delete and they still load up/ work. I looked at the code block and i really didn't understand how to do that.
So here's what i input and this is what it told me,
rm -v /home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south park rally (U) [!].z64
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

I tried removing the () and this is what is gave me
rm -v /home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south park rally U [!].z64
rm: cannot remove ‘/home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south’: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove ‘park’: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove ‘rally’: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove ‘U’: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove ‘[!].z64’: No such file or directory

When I tried the other command it gave me this
ls -l /home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south park rally (U) [!].z64
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('
pi@retropie:~ $ ls -l /home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south park rally U [!].z64
ls: cannot access /home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access park: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access rally: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access U: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access [!].z64: No such file or directory

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here

Clyde

@zero2k You have to put the path and rom file name (together) into quotation marks, because of the special characters and spaces in the file name. I didn't think about that because I tend to avoid special characters in file names for exactly this reason.

rm -v "/home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south park rally (U) [!].z64"

To make a code block, put three backticks ``` before and after the text or ident it four spaces.

edit: The same goes for the ls command.

ls -l "/home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south park rally (U) [!].z64"

zero2k

@clyde Okay I tried it again this time I copy and pasted the way you wrote the code and this is what it gave me

rm: cannot remove ‘/home/pi/Retropie/roms/n64/south park rally (U) [!].z64’: No such file or directory 

It gave me the same thing for the other command line, which is really weird for it to say that there is no such file or directory because I checked it again and the rom is still there. Any ideas why its not saving my installed games also? I'm feeling like its going to come down to me formatting the sd card and reinstalling everything I really hope that I don't have to do that.

zero2k

@zero2k Sorry about that I totally messed up that reply

ChuckyP

@zero2k you need to use the double quotation “

It looks like you used ‘ instead...

Clyde

@chuckyp @zero2k Yes, and just to be sure: Please use the standard straight double quotation ", not any other variants like “ or ”.

edit: Oh, and Retropie's/Linux' filesystem is case sensitive. So, if your rom filename has any capital letters, you have to write them capitalized in the commands, too!

zero2k

I tried what you said my keyboard only has one kind of double quotation it looks standard to me. I tried it with my keyboard quotations and I tried cutting and pasting your code and I got the same result as last time. Oh and I did check to make sure that nothing else needed to be capitalized and their was nothing that needed to be changed.

Clyde

@zero2k said in Retropie changes not saving:

I tried what you said my keyboard only has one kind of double quotation it looks standard to me. I tried it with my keyboard quotations and I tried cutting and pasting your code and I got the same result as last time. Oh and I did check to make sure that nothing else needed to be capitalized and their was nothing that needed to be changed.

Please post your exact command like it appears in the Retropie console, either by copy & paste or as a screenshot. The console saves its command history at logout/shutdown in the hidden file .bash_history in the home directory of the user pi, /home/pi. Mind the dot at the start of .bash_history, it's part of the filename and marks the file as hidden in Linux. If you can't access hidden files via network, you can copy the file to a non-hidden one using this command:

cp /home/pi/.bash_history /home/pi/bash_history

By the way, there is another thread about a problem like yours going on right now. There, it is suggested that the memory card could be failing and that it put itself into read-only mode because of this. You might also consider this for your card and thus, you should make a backup of any data on it that's important to you.

edit: Another way to use the exact rm command with the correct quotation marks would be to put it into a text file on the Pi and make that file executable:

chmod u+x /home/pi/some_file   # makes "some_file" executable

Everything from # onward is just a comment and not part of the command.

zero2k

I checked out that thread and it seems that your right, so I'm going to get another sd card and reinstall everything. But thank you trying to help me with this issue.

zerojay

Memory card has failed, yep.