Games on USB-Drive are not refreshed

[RetroChip]

I think, that PINN is not the problem, since it is not running on PINN, but as a normal operating system. Furthermore, I updated the system. So it should nearly be on the most recent version number. I think, that the tutorial should be usable with every 4.3 retropie version.

[dankcushions]

can you give an example of the full path on your usb drive (including file name and extension) of a file that is not detected?

[RetroChip]

Hey, sorry for my late answer. I was on vacatation and had no access to it.
The behavior is not limited to a special ROM, it is occuring always. An example is:

/media/usb/retropie-mount/roms/gb/Pokemon - Blue Edition.gb

As far as I understood, the ROM is called on the USB-Drive and therefore is not required on the SD-Card anymore.
But RetroPi is always copying the ROM to the "internal" SD-Card:
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gb

And if the file is there, then it is detected by RetroPi. But I delete it file (only the file not the folder) on the internal drive, since this behavior is not desired by me. (And it should not be? Or did I understand something wrong?)

[dankcushions]

@retrochip how are you determining the games are on the internal SD card? because the automatic process uses symbolic links - if you viewed your file structure within retropie it would appear if the game was located in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gb/, but it is physically on the USB drive.

[RetroChip]

Hi, yes this would be great if these files were symbolic links. But I am doubting it, since I was verifying where the symbolic link is going:

If I type in the command shell:
readlink -f ~/RetroPie/roms/gb/Pokemon\ -\ Blue\ Edition.gb

I got the output:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gb/Pokemon - Blue Edition.gb

In my opinion it could be, that it is a symbolic link to itself, where I think that this means it is not a real symbolic link but the file itself.
For a symbolic link I would expect:

-> /media/usb/retropie-mount/roms/gb/Pokemon - Blue Edition.gb

(a link to the USB drive)

By the way, I read the tutorial in the thread creation again and I realized in the last section the small sentence:

Now transfer ROMs either directly to the USB drive, or via any of the usual methods (aside from using the automatic USB copy, obviously!)

In my opinion, this means that a direct copy to the USB-drive is not able to work with the "automatic method", but only with the manual method, doesn't it?

[dankcushions]

@retrochip it might be your NTFS drive. the guide states fat32.

Now transfer ROMs either directly to the USB drive, or via any of the usual methods (aside from using the automatic USB copy, obviously!)

In my opinion, this means that a direct copy to the USB-drive is not able to work with the "automatic method", but only with the manual method, doesn't it?

i don't understand you, here. if your links aren't working, it doesn't matter if the automatic copy has happened or not. you have problems before that.

[RetroChip]

Perhaps, I expressed myself a bit unclearly:
The links are working, if the ROM is in bother folders (/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gb/ and /media/usb/retropie-mount/roms/gb/)
So the games are updated after a restart of the emulation system.
If I delete a rom file on one both folders, then the ROM in the other folder is deleted as well after a certain time. It doesn't matter if I do it on the SD-Card or the USB-Drive. So there is some kind of a syncronization process running. But the interesting question is, if the file in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gb/ is really a symbolic link to /media/usb/retropie-mount/roms/gb/. Then everything would be perfect ;) But as stated before, I doubt it because of the output of the readlink command. Unfortuanetly I do not know more about the sync process.
So it could have something to do with the automatic copy or the manual copy. Does anyone know the author who has written the tutorial and could send me some contact details via PM?

[ChuckyP]

I think you are over-complicating the thought process. It doesn’t “Sync” it only creates a pointer to the rom on your USB Storage.

But there are 2 independent ways to look at this.

1. You load ROMs from a USB onto the Raspberry Pi from a USB stick. In which case, once that has taken place there is no need for the USB device. The ROMs are now on the SD card.

2. You RUN ROMs off of the USB device, and the ROMs live on the external device. In this case there will be a “Link” to the external drive data.

[RetroChip]

Hey, yes I understand. And my question is how do I tell retropie to do as you described in your second point?
Until now I thought it doesn't matter if I use the automatic mount or the manual mount to go your second way.

@dankcushions
I rechecked it with a USB-Drive which is newly formatted with FAT32. I still have the same behavior. (same output for readlink command as before) So it seems to be no problem, that I have a drive with NTFS.

[ChuckyP]

I have used the Official method of “RetroPie-mount” that you describe and it worked fine for me. But I prefer the Easy-Hax toolkit method. Maybe you will have more success with that.

The thing I like about this is you can keep some ROMs on your SD card (if you want to), while also being able to plug in the External drive and reboot to have access to that as well. Win / Win

[dankcushions]

@retrochip said in Games on USB-Drive are not refreshed:

. Does anyone know the author who has written the tutorial and could send me some contact details via PM?

i wrote the tutorial :)

i guess i just don’t know what the problem would be. this is basic functionality of retropie and should work ‘out of the box’. it works for me and many others. i don’t know how i can assist you other than if you look at the usb functions in the scripts and work through it line by line.

[Clyde]

@chuckyp said in Games on USB-Drive are not refreshed:

The thing I like about this is you can keep some ROMs on your SD card (if you want to), while also being able to plug in the External drive and reboot to have access to that as well. Win / Win

Well, there's also the KISS principle – keep it simple, stupid. In this case, that would be having all roms either on the card or on the usb drive.

I understand your desire to adjust the system to your personal preferences, but there is a point where the possible gain is not worth the effort (and that comes from someone who manually set up his usb mount to only some rom folders, but also with over 11 years of Linux experience).

That said, it would be helpful for further help in this matter if you describe your setup method step by step including the exact commands used and config files created/changed. And no, the mere reference to the How-To you used isn't enough.

[RetroChip]

@dankcushions and @ChuckyP

If you configured your retropie, that you run the ROMs OFF of the USB device, with a symbolic link to the external drive data. Could you please provide the output, what you get if you run the readlink -f command in the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ folder for a specific rom file. Then I would at least know how it should look like.

Thank you!

[RetroChip]

I think I got it now :)

I understood that if I access the subdirectories of /home/pi/RetroPie I always access my USB-drive. The subdirectories are not on the SD-card anymore and everything is on the USB-drive.
I verified it with the following command (for anyone who had the same problems):

df -P /home/pi/RetroPi | tail -1 | cut -d' ' -f 1

Output:
/dev/sda1

As you can see here (/dev/sda1) equals my USB-drive:

pi@retropie:/home $ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 7928236 2083396 5419064 28% /
devtmpfs 378828 0 378828 0% /dev
tmpfs 383436 0 383436 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 383436 5460 377976 2% /run
tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 383436 0 383436 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p6 58234 21480 36754 37% /boot
/dev/sda1 1953511420 958316104 995195316 50% /media/usb0

So the readfile command is therefore of course always refering to itself.

In total, this is exactly the behavior I would like to :).

[Clyde]

@retrochip said in Games on USB-Drive are not refreshed:

pi@retropie:/home $ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 7928236 2083396 5419064 28% /
devtmpfs 378828 0 378828 0% /dev
tmpfs 383436 0 383436 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 383436 5460 377976 2% /run
tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 383436 0 383436 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p6 58234 21480 36754 37% /boot
/dev/sda1 1953511420 958316104 995195316 50% /media/usb0

Just a little hint; if you put the output in a codeblock, it's much more readable:

pi@retropie:/home $ **df**
Filesystem      1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root         7928236   2083396   5419064  28% /
devtmpfs           378828         0    378828   0% /dev
tmpfs              383436         0    383436   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs              383436      5460    377976   2% /run
tmpfs                5120         4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs              383436         0    383436   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p6      58234     21480     36754  37% /boot
**/dev/sda1**  1953511420 958316104 995195316  50% **/media/usb0**

[ChuckyP]

@clyde not trying to make things more difficult. Just giving another option in-case he can’t get the official method to work.

In my case I don’t scatter ROMs onto either storage media. I use my hard drive for the CD based games and then when unplugged it still holds all my cartridge systems on the SD Card.

[steptoe]

Did you follow these steps EXACTLY. Note is says FAT32 and NOT NTFS. If you are still on NTFS on your external USB drive you will have to reformat it to FAT32. That should fix the issues ... I had similar issues with an external USB on a PS3. Tried for days (literally) to get it to work. Converted the drive from NTFS to FAT32 and it worked straight away. Not sure why NTFS screws it up but it does

First Update the RetroPie Setup Script
Re-Enable the USB ROM Transfer Service
Format your USB drive to FAT32 per directions above
Create a folder called retropie-mount on the USB drive
Plug into Raspberry Pi
It will proceed to automatically copy the RetroPie folder AND all of its contents (you may need to reboot to start the copying)

Note, that you MUST disable the USB ROM Transfer Service AFTER everything has been completed and copied over, that can confuse things as well

If your USB drive is NOT FAT32, have a look at these links to explain how to convert from NTFS to FAT32. It can take quite some time depending how full your USB drive is. Be patient if you do convert it will work eventually and DO NOT be tempted to stop it. Your USB drive must be plugged into your PC though ....

NTFS is the preferred format these days as filesizes over 4GB are not supported in FAT32 and will cause a copy error if you try to, but as everything on RetroPie is well under 4GB filesizes that isn't an issue here. Even if you try MAME CHD games they are all under 4GB. Not that the PI3 will run all of them, but that option is there if you wish to try once you've got it running

https://www.disk-partition.com/tutorials/convert-ntfs-to-fat32.html

If you are not 100% sure what filesystem your USB drive is, in the My Computer folder, simply left-click your USB drive once and it should tell you what it is either NTFS or FAT32. If not, right-click your USB drive and choose'properties' at the bottom of the drop-down menu it will then show another windows with the filesystem clearly shown as NTFS or FAT32. Pretty much every USB hard drive I've bought is now already NTFS format

If nothing works, you might have to rebuild an image from scratch. I've done it this way in the past and installed a minimal OS image from the NOOBS option, and rebuild RetroPie manually. More work, but guaranteed to work if the RetroPie image is causing headaches

Use the NOOBS_LITE download which is the bare minimum and you then choose what OS to install. But you NEED an internet connection. Preferably an ethernet one as its much faster than the PI's wireless connection

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/noobs/

Then follow these steps EXACTLY. If you have already installed the OS using the above method, then just skip to the INSTALL RETROPIE step and work from that. It does work this way as I've installed it this way when I've also had issues with the RetroPie pre-built images in the past

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Manual-Installation

"Custom" hard drives always cause problems for future updates, as its basically just shovelware. They install functioning software package and just load everything onto the drive and you are left with basically with zero after sales support and hundreds of games that are not suitable for that set-up

[zerojay]

NTFS is supported by the retropie-mount routine. It's working 100% fine here with a 3TB NTFS file system on a external portable hard drive.

[Clyde]

@chuckyp said in Games on USB-Drive are not refreshed:

@clyde not trying to make things more difficult. Just giving another option in-case he can’t get the official method to work.

And I mistook you for the TO, that's where my last paragraph about helpful details came from. :*)