Boot on Desktop but automatically quits to tty after a few seconds

[honeypot]

Hello and first of all thanks for your amazing work on the RetroPie project!

I have just installed RetroPie on my Raspberry, but I have problems booting on my desktop and could not find any relevant answer to my case. The issue is that I boot on the DE (XFCE), but then it automatically quits the X session and launches a tty1 session a few seconds later. I can go back into the Desktop with startx, but I find it to be an ugly workaround. I have not found any relevant error details in the log files.

In more details, here is what I did:

1. Installing the RetroPie image (last version) on a SD card.
2. Booting the SD card into Emulation Station, installed a few games -> everything works fine
3. As I also wanted a Desktop session on the Pi, I have installed xfce with all the relevant packages.
4. In the RetroPie setup menu, I have enabled the option to boot into the Desktop instead of the Emulation Station

I don't know how to solve this problem. I have found no information related to this bug. I ended up with the same problem with my first trial with RetroPie on a stretch Raspbian system, so I thought it had something to do with RetroPie not being supported on stretch. Anyone else having the same issue?

[herb_fargus]

@honeypot said in Boot on Desktop but automatically quits to tty after a few seconds:

I have found no information related to this bug

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/FAQ/#how-do-i-boot-to-the-desktop-or-kodi

"Note you'll want to disable the retropie splash from the setup script first."

[honeypot]

Thanks a lot! You are right, I didn't disable the retropie splash. Now it works :)

[herb_fargus]

@honeypot another happy customer! (Can someone be a customer if what they were given was free?)

[Nossie]

Apologies for necro'ing this post - but is it possible to automatically startx again after it kicks you CLI? thus avoiding to type it in again and without disabling the splash ...

[mitu]

@nossie Modify the autostart.shscript and add startxafter the emulationstation #auto line, this way existing from ES will start the X session.

[Clyde]

@mitu I'm curious, how would that react to a restart or shutdown via ES' menu? Would X omit the shutdown, would the shutdown interrupt the starting X, or wouldn't X begin to start at all?

[mitu]

@clyde The shutdown/reboot would likely interrupt the starting X and continue on with the desired operation.

[Clyde]

@mitu Thanks, that also was my first guess (although I mentioned it secondly ;) ), but the other options seemed probable, too.