emulationstation running as a service

[DarkWolfSLV]

I cannot find documentation on how to setup emulationstation as a service under systemd so I tried to execute it within another script I already have (TelegramBot) but I cannot make it work, I was getting a TERM error so I define a bunch of variables but it didn't work, now I see a weird error saying "[80B blob data]"
I even tried to call another script instead and it didn't work.

My goal is to be able to start emulation station on demand since I don't want it running all the time due to other resource intensive tasks I have running on my rPi.

Suggestion?

import subprocess
import sys
import time
import telepot
import os
import uuid
from telepot.loop import MessageLoop
from telepot.namedtuple import ReplyKeyboardMarkup
os.setuid(1001)

enviroment = [
  ('LC_ALL','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_MEASUREMENT','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_PAPER','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_MONETARY','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LANG','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_NAME','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_COLLATE','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_IDENTIFICATION','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_TIME','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_TELEPHONE','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_MESSAGES','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_CTYPE','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_ADDRESS','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('LC_NUMERIC','en_US.UTF-8'),
  ('PWD','/home/dark_wolfslv'),
  ('HOME','/home/dark_wolfslv'),
  ('TERM','xterm'),
  ('PATH','/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games'),
  ('LS_COLORS','rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:mh=00:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:mi=00:su=37;41:sg=30;43:ca=30;41:tw=30;42:ow=34;42:st=37;44:ex=01;32:*.tar=01;31:*.tgz=01;31:*.arc=01;31:*.arj=01;31:*.taz=01;31:*.lha=01;31:*.lz4=01;31:*.lzh=01;31:*.lzma=01;31:*.tlz=01;31:*.txz=01;31:*.tzo=01;31:*.t7z=01;31:*.zip=01;31:*.z=01;31:*.Z=01;31:*.dz=01;31:*.gz=01;31:*.lrz=01;31:*.lz=01;31:*.lzo=01;31:*.xz=01;31:*.zst=01;31:*.tzst=01;31:*.bz2=01;31:*.bz=01;31:*.tbz=01;31:*.tbz2=01;31:*.tz=01;31:*.deb=01;31:*.rpm=01;31:*.jar=01;31:*.war=01;31:*.ear=01;31:*.sar=01;31:*.rar=01;31:*.alz=01;31:*.ace=01;31:*.zoo=01;31:*.cpio=01;31:*.7z=01;31:*.rz=01;31:*.cab=01;31:*.jpg=01;35:*.jpeg=01;35:*.mjpg=01;35:*.mjpeg=01;35:*.gif=01;35:*.bmp=01;35:*.pbm=01;35:*.pgm=01;35:*.ppm=01;35:*.tga=01;35:*.xbm=01;35:*.xpm=01;35:*.tif=01;35:*.tiff=01;35:*.png=01;35:*.svg=01;35:*.svgz=01;35:*.mng=01;35:*.pcx=01;35:*.mov=01;35:*.mpg=01;35:*.mpeg=01;35:*.m2v=01;35:*.mkv=01;35:*.webm=01;35:*.ogm=01;35:*.mp4=01;35:*.m4v=01;35:*.mp4v=01;35:*.vob=01;35:*.qt=01;35:*.nuv=01;35:*.wmv=01;35:*.asf=01;35:*.rm=01;35:*.rmvb=01;35:*.flc=01;35:*.avi=01;35:*.fli=01;35:*.flv=01;35:*.gl=01;35:*.dl=01;35:*.xcf=01;35:*.xwd=01;35:*.yuv=01;35:*.cgm=01;35:*.emf=01;35:*.ogv=01;35:*.ogx=01;35:*.aac=00;36:*.au=00;36:*.flac=00;36:*.m4a=00;36:*.mid=00;36:*.midi=00;36:*.mka=00;36:*.mp3=00;36:*.mpc=00;36:*.ogg=00;36:*.ra=00;36:*.wav=00;36:*.oga=00;36:*.opus=00;36:*.spx=00;36:*.xspf=00;36:'),
  ('NO_AT_BRIDGE','1'),
  ('XDG_SESSION_ID','c12'),
  ('USER','dark_wolfslv'),
  ('TEXTDOMAIN','Linux-PAM'),
  ('MAIL','/var/mail/dark_wolfslv'),
  ('SHELL','/bin/bash'),
  ('SHLVL','1'),
  ('LANGUAGE','en_US:en'),
  ('LOGNAME','dark_wolfslv'),
  ('XDG_RUNTIME_DIR','/run/user/1001')
]

def handle(msg):
    chat_id = msg['chat']['id']
    command = msg['text']

    sys.stderr.write('Got command: %s' % command)

    if command == '1':
		#Do Something
    elif command == '2':
        #Do Something
    elif command == '3':
        #Do Something
    elif command == 'EmulationStation':
        #pid = subprocess.Popen([sys.executable, "/home/dark_wolfslv/ppp.py"])
        #os.system('bash /home/dark_wolfslv/run_emulationstation.sh')
        #os.system('emulationstation')
        #os.chdir('/home/dark_wolfslv')
        #bot.sendMessage(chat_id, 'cdw: %s' % os.getcwd())
        for varname,value in enviroment:
          os.putenv(varname,value)
        os.system('emulationstation')
		bot.sendMessage(chat_id, 'EmulationStation started')
    else:
        bot.sendMessage(chat_id, 'Invalid command')

bot = telepot.Bot('ID')

MessageLoop(bot, handle).run_as_thread()
sys.stderr.write('Listening...\n')

# Keep the program running.
while 1:
    time.sleep(10)



>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

import os
import subprocess
import sys

print "start"
pid = subprocess.Popen(['python3', '/home/dark_wolfslv/ppp.py'])
# pid = subprocess.Popen([sys.executable, "/home/dark_wolfslv/ppp.py"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT))
# pid = subprocess.Popen([sys.executable, "/home/dark_wolfslv/ppp.py"])
# pid = subprocess.Popen([sys.executable, "/bin/bash", "/home/dark_wolfslv/run_emulationstation.sh"])
# subprocess.Popen(["/bin/bash", "/home/dark_wolfslv/run_emulationstation.sh"])
# subprocess.Popen(bash /home/dark_wolfslv/run_emulationstation.sh)
#
# os.system('bash /home/dark_wolfslv/run_emulationstation.sh')
# subprocess.call("./run_emulationstation.sh")
print "end"

[mikeperalta]

+1 I would love if Retropie configured Emulation Station to run as a systemd service. I personally wouldn't disable it at boot, but it would make it a lot easier to programmatically start/stop/enable/disable based on my needs.

As it stands now I don't even know where it's even invoked at boot :-O

[korkman]

I want to start emulationstation on-demand, this is what I've come up with:

Emulationstation heavily depends on a terminal being allocated for it to work. It switches a lot between graphical and text-mode. So in "/etc/systemd/system/my-emulationstation.service":

[Unit]
Description=my emulationstation

[Service]
User=pi
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/run-emulationstation
Type=simple
StandardInput=tty-force
TTYVHangup=yes
TTYPath=/dev/tty20
TTYReset=yes

Also, there's a bug that requires emulationstation to be started inside /home/pi, so in "/usr/local/bin/run-emulationstation":

#! /bin/bash

# switch to same tty allocated in .service
chvt 20
# cd to home
cd /home/pi
# run emulationstation in foreground process
/opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/emulationstation.sh

And for the curious: I want it to start when specific hardware is attached, specifically an 8Bitdo Zero Bluetooth Gamepad. So in "/etc/udev/rules.d/50-my-emulationstation.rules":

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTR{name}=="8Bitdo Zero GamePad", TAG+="systemd", ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}="my-emulationstation"