Using an shared drive on PC for roms.

raulitob

Hello so I wanted to use a shared drive to hold roms.
I followed the directions here

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-Network-Share

So my setup is a retropie 4.4 and i'm using a windows 8 machine which has a USB external drive mounted on it.
That's were I want to have my roms. I matched the file structure from the retropie to the share.

On my PC the external drive is assigned "d" , the PC does have a static IP address. That D drive is shareable with guest access.

So I have the following to share that drive to the retropie

launched sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh

added this line

sudo mount -t cifs -o guest,uid=pi //192.xxx.xx.xxx/D/retropie /home/pi/RetroPie

I went into the raspberry pie config to wait for network at boot.

I saved that config.

I noticed when i did a $df that the drive was not mounting.

I can't figure out if I misconfigured it or not?

Any help would be appreciated thanks!

mitu

You can't mount a sub-folder from a share, if your D is shared as \\WINDOWS\D it should work, but \\WINDOWS\D\RETROPIE is not a valid share name. Try mounting first form a command line until you get the correct invocation, then add it to the autostart.sh script.

raulitob

Thanks for the reply.

So quick question then, I have to make sure the retropie sees the network shared drive correct?
IN this case it's the drive labeled "d" so i did a

smbstatus --shares

So when i run pi@retropie:/mnt $ sudo ls -l /var/lib/samba/usershares
total 0

It shows no shares.

mitu

@raulitob No, that's not the way to do it. smbstatus shows the shares exported by the PI, not the ones that might be on the network.
If you want to see the shares exported by your Windows machine, just open Windows explorer and put \\localhost in the location bar, this should list the shares on your Windows machine.

raulitob

@mitu said in Using an shared drive on PC for roms.:

\localhost

Ok I did that and see my D drive as being shared and the network path is

\Office\d

So now let me start from scratch to mount this

First I want to copy over the file structure so I run

cp /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg /home/pi/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

So does this line /home/pi/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg have to be the path to the shared drive or?

mitu

@raulitob You don't need to copy the ES's configuration file over.
If you intend to keep your ROMs only on the network share, then first make sure the file share mounts ok and it's writeable from the PI system, afterwards you can just follow the docs to transfer your ROM to the share and mount it on boot.

mitu

I think it would be easier if you'd create a sub-folder on your drive (D) and share it with the retropie name on the network. Then in your script just mount \\office\retropie over the /home/pi/Retropie/roms folder. Copy the ROMs folder first from your RetroPie file share so you'd have D:\retropie\psx, D:\retropie\amiga, etc.

raulitob

@mitu

Ok great so what i did is make a folder in that D drive so

D:\RETROPIE\roms

and then changed the sharing permissions on windows to "everyone" and made it read/write by everyone.

Now do I have to delete the rom folder in the retropie or leave it as is?

then copied the rom folders over from the retropie

This is my autostart.sh

the RETROPIE folder on my shared drive is set to allow a guest user with no need for a username/password

Note: so on my shared drive on my windows 8 pc it has the following path to Retropie

D:/RETROPIE/roms/

Do i have to put the ip address in there as well?

I realized my D drive has a name , would that make a difference?

Thanks!

mitu

@raulitob Before editing the file, try running the command from the SSH session and see if it works. The \\office\retropie share should be mounted over the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms. You should

copy your ROM folders from \\retropie\roms to D:\retropie\roms
try running the mount command from the putty session

mount -t cifs -o guest,uid=pi \\office\retropie /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

and then see if your \\retropie\roms share contains the files from your disk.

The name (label) of yor disc in Windows doesn't matter. You don't have to use the IP address, unless your RetroPie system doesn't know the office address.

raulitob

@mitu said in Using an shared drive on PC for roms.:

mount -t cifs -o guest,uid=pi \office\retropie /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

Thanks again for the suggestion. So i tried that and got this result

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie $ sudo mount -t cifs -o guest,uid=pi \\office\RetroPie /home/pi/RetroPie/roms
mount.cifs: bad UNC (\officeRetroPie)

So then I reversed the slashes and got this

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie $ sudo mount -t cifs -o guest,uid=pi //office/RetroPie /home/pi/RetroPie/roms
mount error(13): Permission denied

does that mean the folder on my pc has not been shared right or?
Thanks!

raulitob

Oh Wait I think i got it

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie $ sudo mount -t cifs -o username=username,password=pass //192.xxx.x.xxx/RetroPie/roms /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

Didnt get any errors when I ran that.

raulitob

I verified its loading roms from my shared drive, thanks so much for the help!