Pi4, Pixel Desktop, 4K TV -- no go

aaciii

When I choose to install Pixel desktop, it gets installed and added as expected to Ports in Retropie.

However when I launch the desktop (either from the RetroPie Ports menu, or by going to terminal and typing startx) - all I get is a black screen with a teeny tiny terminal window in the upper left of the screen. The mouse pointer allows me to mouse into that terminal window and type commands -- but no other desktop elements (menu bar, desktop background, icons, etc.) appear. If I "exit" from the terminal, I go back to EmulationStation.

Any ideas on why installing lxde / Pixel Desktop isn't working?

Tried it on two separate SD cards.
#help

mitu

Can you add some more info about your setup, as detailed in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first ?

aaciii

There's not much to state - it's a 4GB Pi4, stock power supply, 128GB SD card with RetroPie 4.6 installed. Nothing unusual -- fresh install. installed from the Pi4 SD image off the retropie site.

It works fine except if I try to install the Pixel desktop. The desktop installs, but upon starting it, I get a black screen, a tiny terminal window (graphical -- not a tty/text screen, it's definitely a terminal "window" in graphics mode -- and it is small because the TV is a 4K screen).

mitu

Can you try updating the RetroPie-Setup and OS kernel/packages, and then re-install the Pixel desktop ?

aaciii

@mitu Yes, I did that. All packages updaated.

Note, when installing the Pixel desktop, there are a number of

dpkg-deb: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)

errors - all stating that a file was used by another module.

mitu

@aaciii Looks like the installation did not complete correctly. Can you post the installation log - it should be in $HOME/RetroPie-Setup/logs - on pastebin.com ?

aaciii

Here it is. Seems like it wants to install a lot of libraries that are already installed (by what, I have no idea)

https://pastebin.com/n5Tqp1Z3

mitu

You didn't seem to have updated the OS or the kernel, the error log shows some dependencies are not available/not-installable, either an out-of-date apt repository cache or pinned packages (?).

Make sure you're fully updated when trying the installation

sudo apt -y update
sudo apt -y full-upgrade
sudo reboot

aaciii

I did do so -- there was this one module blocking installs. "xkb-data"

See this log I took of trying to fix dependencies with the command "apt --fix-broken install":

https://pastebin.com/N3jdPkBu

you'll see there is a conflict over and over with xkb-data 2.26-2

I forced dpkg overwrites on, and all is well now -- but I'd like to understand what that xkb-data module is and why it's in the way

mitu

@aaciii said in Pi4, Pixel Desktop, 4K TV -- no go:

I did do so -- there was this one module blocking installs. "xkb-data"

Your kernel version shows you didn't update fully.

you'll see there is a conflict over and over with xkb-data 2.26-2..

I don't see why that happens, I get no conflicts using the latest version from apt:

 sudo apt install --reinstall libatk1.0-data
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 145 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://mirrors.pidginhost.com/raspbian/raspbian buster/main armhf libatk1.0-data all 2.30.0-2 [145 kB]
Fetched 145 kB in 0s (508 kB/s)        
(Reading database ... 191009 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libatk1.0-data_2.30.0-2_all.deb ...
Unpacking libatk1.0-data (2.30.0-2) over (2.30.0-2) ...
Setting up libatk1.0-data (2.30.0-2) ...
pi@pie4:~ $ dpkg -l | grep xkb-data
ii  xkb-data                               2.26-2                               all          X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configuration data

EDIT: can you run

apt-cache policy xkb-data

and post the output

aaciii

The same module blocks the apt full-upgrade process:
https://pastebin.com/t0hrqXvE

Here's the policy for that xkb-data module:
https://pastebin.com/4ESBTSBP

mitu

apt-cache output is ok, but the upgrade status it's wierd. Are you sure you've used the RetroPie image from retropie.org.uk/download and didn't modify any of the dpkg/apt settings (extra repositories ?) ?

aaciii

Totally sure, the only place I’ve ever gotten an image from is the RetroPie site. I have never messed with any command line update settings, and until this issue I have only updated using the RetroPie menu script.

aaciii

The only other package I ever installed is the rpie-art script package which is installed via command line (via git)

This is the process I followed for that. I don’t see how this could be related but just in case.

https://github.com/meleu/rpie-art

mitu

@aaciii said in Pi4, Pixel Desktop, 4K TV -- no go:

This is the process I followed for that. I don’t see how this could be related but just in case.

No, it's not related. Alas, I don't have any ideas - try using aptitude instead of apt, it's worth a shot.