Removing Retropie From Debian

[KN4THX]

While I was at work for hurricane on-call duty I created a user and installed Retropie under that user. I wanted to clean some things up and deleted that user not thinking about what I was doing. I now have a couple of questions about installing Retropie and multiple users:

1. Emulation Station still runs but forces me to quit due to not seeing systems installed. Where is emulation station installed? What is the best way to find what is installed still and remove it?

2. Is there a way to limit the Retropie install and executables such as emulationstation to just a specific user? Before I deleted that user I could run it from my main account. I assumed this meant that deleting the other user would allow me to continue to do so but I should have dug deeper first.

3. I do not see a Retropie folder under my main account so I take it that every user shares the same rom and config folders rathe rthan each user having their own that can be customized?

4. Is there a straightforward (not expecting quick or easy) way to remove anything installed by the script and start fresh?

I apologize for any simple things I should know. I have been a long time windows user and made the switch to Linux over the last year thanks to Retropie and other raspberry pi projects greatly feeding my interests.

[mitu]

Everything that is RetroPie specific is stored under /opt/retropie - including Emulationstation. The install script will install additional packages from the distribution's repository if needed, but I think the only system modifications done by an installation are the auto-login feature and the splashscreen service - which are not applicable on a PC install.
RetroPie does not work with a multi-user install, the installation user is the only one configured - the configuration files in /opt/retropie/configs are owned by that user and also the ROMs folder are set in Emulationstation to that users' folder (/home/myuser/RetroPie/roms).

To uninstall, you can run the RetroPie-Setup script and choose the Uninstall option. Of course, if you removed the user's home folder, that won't be available anymore.

To install under a different user, just remove/rename the /opt/retropie folder and re-run the installation under a new user.

[kingfrankbob]

I agree that I so true I have done this before

[KN4THX]

@mitu Thank you, I apologize I did not see this notification and just happened to check today. I previously searched for the Retropie files in Terminal and I was able to figure out where the folders were and delete them which matches exactly as you described.

Thank you for clarification on the multi user install. I reinstalled it under the 'retropie' user I created but I can still run it from my main account. I was also able to configure the keyboard as a controller and the config stays. When I log into my 'retropie' user I run emulationstation but it does ask me to configure the keyboard for this user. This made me curious as to why I had access to this install by another user. I could even play snes roms but it did state there was an error saving to an /opt/retropie file but it was cut off. I tried looking for config files throughout /opt/retropie and its sub-directories but am unable to locate the config file for the key mapping in retropie. I was trying to see how it stores input configs from two different users for this but not for the other files. I know there is a config for the emulators and libreto but wasn't sure what file holds configs for retropie/emulationstation itself.

I only wanted it on my laptop for my recent and upcoming trips when I can't take my Pi but if it is going to be on here I wanted to make sure I knew how it worked between users. I hope this isn't confusing or I am not misunderstanding. I come from a windows background mostly and their install options tend to allow for a single user install where the other users cannot even see the program exists, let alone run it (admin rights excluded of course). It is nothing major but I get curious to know how everything works on my machine.

As a side note, if I am testing a nightly Retropie build, will an update pull from the fkms branch or does the nightly build have to be freshly installed each time?

[mitu]

@KN4THX said in Removing Retropie From Debian:

As a side note, if I am testing a nightly Retropie build, will an update pull from the fkms branch or does the nightly build have to be freshly installed each time?

I don't understand what 'nightly build' means in this context. Usually a git pull would update the repository to the latest version.