lr-atari800 keeps corrupting itself, won't run, indicates segmentation fault (solved!)

[neurocrash]

I think it is now four times in the last few days that I've setup Retropie and gotten the Atari 800 and 5200 emulators working, but then mysteriously after using other emulators for a while, when trying to run an Atari 8-bit program, the screen goes dark then after a few seconds it returns to the Retropie menu. Nothing will run.

I am positive that it was working and I tested quite a few items, and I didn't touch the atari800 configuration files or bios in any way, yet it has failed again. I have not had this problem with any of the other configured emulators, including Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx, Vectrex, Mame, DOSbox, or PSX.

Has anyone else had this problem?

I anticipated that this might happen again, so I had backed up my configuration directories. I deleted the existing atari800 and atari5200 directories and replaced them with backups, but this did not solve the problem.

Here's the relevant section of the runcommand.log where the segmentation fault is listed. It is always on line 1255 in case that is meaningful.

[INFO] [Environ]: SET_SYSTEM_AV_INFO.
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh: line 1255:  1173 Segmentation fault      /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-atari800/atari800_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/atari5200/retroarch.cfg "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari5200/Asteroids (1983) (Atari) (Prototype) [!].bin" --verbose --appendconfig /dev/shm/retroarch.cfg

Here is the entire runcommand.log

https://pastebin.com/kkhWTvgR

I had previously installed the optional atari800 emulator for testing, although when I attempted to change to this from the runcommand menu, it was no longer listed. I don't know how it could have become disabled. In Retropie setup, it says that it is installed, but it too stopped working. After reinstalling, atari800 runs, although I would prefer to use lr-atari800 for consistency with controls.

Reinstalling lr-atari800 did not result in it working again. Uninstalling and reinstalling lr-atari800 did not solve the problem either.

Is lr-atari800 broken at present?

Here's the best part. I shut down and tried my other sdcard with the working lr-atari800 emulator, and it is now also not working.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm pulling my hair out on this one.

[neurocrash]

It was.... the salmon mousse!

Actually, it was my USB controller adapter.

I have a Retro-bit Atari 2600 dual joystick adapter. It works fine for other emulators like 2600 and MAME, but if it is plugged in to any usb port while launching lr-atari800, the emulator crashes.

It is necessary to unplug the adapter, launch the game with the keyboard, then plug the adapter back in and wait for it to be recognized in game. I don't anticipate there is anything I can do on my end to fix this, but maybe this information may be helpful if users with other incompatible hardware experience the same crashes.

Cheers

[JacekQ]

@neurocrash
I have the same problem with segmentation fault while running atari emulator.
I wrote two scripts:
1 - /home/pi/joyoffon.sh - turn off, wait 30 seconds, turn on controller
1-1.5 - this is my controller listed by lsusb -t

sudo echo '1-1.5' | sudo tee /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/unbind
sleep 30
sudo echo '1-1.5' | sudo tee /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/bind

2 - /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh
run joyoffon.sh only for atari emulator

echo "runcommand-onstart.sh" >&2
echo $1 >&2

if [[ $1 == *"atari"* ]]; then
        echo "This is atari - run script" >&2
        /home/pi/joyoffon.sh &
fi

After running atari game I have to wait until controller message appears.