Is Retropie right for me? Are there alternatives?

HPK-de

Yes. Kodi is really powerful, lots of plugins ;).
I'm using it for music, webradio, pictures, youtube etc.
You can even control it with tv remotes with a bit tweaking around :-)

Have fun with it

ubernub

Now how do I get Kodi to recognize my portable NTFS hard drive? It's not showing up in /media/ at all, though it does pop up a little message saying it's been inserted... Sorry for all the noob questions... Also, did it reboot to get to kodi or is it in the same OS still? And get Retropie to recognize it too since that's where all my games are...

HPK-de

@ubernub

Question: I don't know because i dont use NTFS HDDs. Someone else will know.
It is the same OS.
Explanation:
The OS you are running is "Rasbian" Linux, a fork of Debian Linux.
"Retropie" is running in Raspbian and is the "background", while "Emulationstation" is the
user interface (GUI) for all the emulators.
KODI is running as part of Retropie, started via Emulationstation.

There are special linux distributions out there just for KODI, but it works well in Retropie.

KODI has nothing to do with your games, if you exit KODI you are back in ES and everything is fine.

BuZz

@ubernub Did you use the RetroPie image or install RetroPie on top of existing OS ?

ubernub

@BuZz I used the retropie image.

BuZz

it should automatically mount in /media/usb0 then (unless usbromservice has been removed/disabled).

ubernub

@BuZz usbromservice is enabled. I'm not seeing any way to even browse to it in retropie. In Kodi there's a /media/usb0 but nothing in it. This thing really isn't very user friendly for absolute beginners :(

ntfs-3g is installed and functional, too but I can't for the life of me remember how to mount a usb SSD in linux manually.

BuZz

please unplug then re-plug in the hd, and then post the output (via ssh) of

dmesg | tail

For using ssh - https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/ssh

ubernub

@BuZz Thanks for you help so far. This finally feels like making progress!

pi@retropie:~ $ dmesg | tail
[ 3794.934517] usb-storage 1-1.5:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 3794.934888] scsi host5: usb-storage 1-1.5:1.0
[ 3795.932399] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access Samsung Portable SSD T1 0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 3795.933759] sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[ 3795.934070] sd 5:0:0:0: [sda] 976773168 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/466 GiB)
[ 3795.934583] sd 5:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 3795.934603] sd 5:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[ 3795.935578] sd 5:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 3795.938631] sda: sda1
[ 3795.943017] sd 5:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk

BuZz

you can mount that disk manually with sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt (which will mount it to the /mnt folder) and unmount it with sudo umount /mnt - however to see why usbromservice isn't mounting it, please post the output from cat /var/log/syslog

BuZz

Please use a site like pastebin.com for the large log

ubernub

@BuZz http://pastebin.com/jP5jqWSp

BuZz

for some reason usbmount doesn't like it - did it mount ok manually ?

what is the output of sudo parted /dev/sda print ?

ubernub

@BuZz

pi@retropie:~ $ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount: unknown filesystem type 'exfat'
pi@retropie:~ $ sudo parted /dev/sda print
Model: Samsung Portable SSD T1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.8kB 500GB 500GB primary boot

BuZz

It is not NTFS. It is exfat formatted

try this

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

and try the mount commands again.

or use FAT32/NTFS

ubernub

@BuZz That worked! I can mount it now, but how do I get it to see the roms on it?

BuZz

Did you read this https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive
?

ubernub

@BuZz Thank you! That fixed the rest of it. I had to change the filesystem to exfat-fuse instead of vfat but otherwise it worked perfectly. :)