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    Running ROMs from a Network Share

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General Discussion and Gaming
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    • J
      JFamily @Shakz
      last edited by

      @Shakz Ah, again another facepalm. I knew that :( -- So basically, according the the document, either deal with it or no updated play counts... Not favorable but play counts aren't really that important to me.

      ShakzS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • J
        jpxdude
        last edited by jpxdude

        What @Shakz says seems to make sense! I'm not interested in meta data so will probably turn this off. I'm in the process of scraping which appears to be working but is equally incredibly slow!

        Edit - just to update, I've turned off the saving of metadata on exit and everything is pretty much now working fine! The only weird thing left is a lack of splash screen, which fails to load on startup, otherwise, everything else works...regular game saves work as well as saving state. I'd also like to scrape faster than use the built in ES scraper, otherwise RetroPie itself is working pretty well so far!

        Thanks for your help @Shakz and @JFamily it is much appreciated!!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • ShakzS
          Shakz @JFamily
          last edited by

          @JFamily Well honestly I don't often shut down my pi. No reason to really. It manages power at an idle state just fine and even with 1000s of games on it; it still really only takes a min or so to shutdown...just gotta be patient.

          RetroPie tips, tricks, and tweaks: https://www.youtube.com/eazyhax

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          • D
            doncastermems
            last edited by

            Can't someone do a step by step for this I want to run rooms from my pc the info here doesn't make any sense to normal ppl

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            • V
              vxjester @doncastermems
              last edited by vxjester

              @doncastermems
              I'll take a shot at it.
              Step 1: sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.old
              Step 2: sudo nano /etc/fstab
              Step 3: add at the bottom of everything that is there //server/share /pathto/mountpoint cifs credentials=/home/username/.smbcredentials,uid=shareuser 0 0
              Example: //192.168.1.1/share/roms /home/pi/RetroPie cifs credentials=/home/pi/.smbcredentials,uid=pi 0 0
              Step 4: Press ctrl+o then enter to save.
              Step 5: Press ctrl+x to exit.
              Step 6: next sudo nano ~/.smbcredentials
              Step 7: Add your network drive info to this in this format (you might not need the domain part):
              username=shareuser
              password=sharepassword
              domain=domain_or_workgroupname
              Step 8: Save and exit just like before in step 4 and 5.
              Step 9: sudo mount -a
              Step 10: sudo chown RetroPie: /home/pi/RetroPie
              Note might need to sudo chmod 0600 ~/.smbcredentials
              Then sudo mount -a
              Then ls ~/RetroPie
              This is to check if you done everything correctly.

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              • D
                doncastermems
                last edited by

                ok thanks so much ill have a go, so im guessing the blue bit is the bit i edit with my share path details the rest of line i leave as it is ?

                theres a space between /roms and /home should that be there ?

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                • V
                  vxjester @doncastermems
                  last edited by

                  @doncastermems
                  Yes there is a space in between /roms and /home because it the end of the directory path and the beginning of another. See what you are telling the pi is you want it to point to your network drive as part of the pi's filesystem. To answer your first question yes the blue is what you want to edit for where ever you have for your network.

                  BuZzB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • D
                    doncastermems
                    last edited by

                    Ok so I'm almost there got the Roms showing and loading from pc but no retropie menu ? I've only copied my Roms folder to the PC should I have copied anything else from the sd card in the pi to the PC folder

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                    • BuZzB
                      BuZz administrators @vxjester
                      last edited by BuZz

                      @vxjester said in Running ROMs from a Network Share:

                      @doncastermems
                      Yes there is a space in between /roms and /home because it the end of the directory path and the beginning of another. See what you are telling the pi is you want it to point to your network drive as part of the pi's filesystem. To answer your first question yes the blue is what you want to edit for where ever you have for your network.

                      You should use markdown (click on the compose ? at the top right when editing a message) to format your post, and it will be easier to follow.

                      eg this is a inline preformatted block surrounded by a single backtick

                      #!/bin/bash
                      # and this is a code block using three backticks ```
                      

                      I did an example edit on your message but it could do with some more formatting imho.

                      To help us help you - please make sure you read the sticky topics before posting - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

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                      • P
                        peer1979
                        last edited by peer1979

                        I'm trying to seperate the Retropie folder with all my roms and saves from my retropie installation and access them through a samba share. Although i'm now able to play games from that share, i've got issues with my savegames. It seems to be a right issue, i can't get it right (pun intented).

                        What i've tried: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-Network-Share
                        I've also checked: http://electricgardener.net/retropie-moving-games-usb-stick and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountWindowsSharesPermanently.

                        I'm a novice when it comes to linux.

                        My setup:

                        Pi 1

                        • openelec
                        • usb harddrive mounted (NTFS) and accesible throught media/Media/
                        • Retropie pi map in media/Media/Games/Retropie
                        • Rights folder Retropie/saves: drwxrwxrwx
                        • Rights of files in folder Retropie/saves: -rw-r--r--
                        • relevant part of samba.conf

                        [Media]
                        path = /media/Media
                        available = yes
                        browsable = yes
                        public = yes
                        writable = yes

                        Pi 2

                        • retropie
                        • content off /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh

                        sudo mount -t cifs -o user=root,password=openelec,uid=1000,gid=1000 //168.1.100/Media/Games/RetroPie /home/pi/RetroPie
                        emulationstation #auto

                        My suspisions

                        I think this is a rights issue, because i can play the games from the share. When i try to change the rights in the saves folder it does
                        not work or present any error. Nothing happens. Perhaps it has something to do with NTFS?

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                        • P
                          peer1979
                          last edited by

                          Fixed. Yesterday i saw an extra , in the options list of the mount command and removed it. And voila, it finally works.

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                          • W
                            Waffles
                            last edited by

                            So I am an absolute noob with Linux and the raspberry pi, so I apologize for my ignorance.

                            My first question is, what do I put as my username and password? My computers or network share user and pass?

                            When I copied over all the folders from the retropie installation to my desired share destination, (RETROPIE) is after every folder name, do I leave that?

                            When I'm adding the line of code to autostart.sh, there is one line of text already there, should I put the line of code above or below that? I assumed above that, as that would be the top.

                            When I enter ls RetroPie, what exactly should I be seeing? It looks like 4 folders in blue.

                            Once again I apologize for the probably stupid questions.

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                            • P
                              peer1979
                              last edited by

                              @Waffles

                              username, password: network shares user and password.
                              leave folders: If you mean, can i leave the old folders in the original location: yes. Consider it a backup :)
                              where to put line: I put it above, it worked fine.
                              what do you see: To test the network share, copy some unique files to the network share (f.e. some new roms) and see if they appear. If so, you're good. I don't know the colorscheme by memory, sorry.

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                              • ?
                                A Former User
                                last edited by

                                Can I buffer the current game on the SD card? I am facing loading issues on big ROMS.

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                                • G
                                  gavster2002
                                  last edited by

                                  New to forum so would like to say hi to everyone!

                                  I am trying to get my RetroPie to boot noms from network. I have created a share on my NAS \nas\retropie. First question do i put roms folders in here or do I create folder called roms and drop the various folders in there?

                                  I have tried doing using this:

                                  sudo raspi-config
                                  In there, select the 4th option and tell it Yes.

                                  Option 1: Add to autostart.sh (Preferred if using v4.0+)

                                  sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh
                                  Add the following line to the top of that file, being sure to adjust it for your personal settings, paths and options.

                                  sudo mount -t cifs -o username=retropie,password=retropie //192.168.0.10/retropie /home/pi/RetroPie

                                  after reboot emotion station errors that it can't find system and clicking ok returns me to a command prompt.

                                  If I use the guest setting:
                                  sudo mount -t cifs -o guest,uid=pi //192.168.0.10/retropie /home/pi/RetroPie

                                  the system boots but there are no games?

                                  Any help would be appreciated

                                  Thanks
                                  Gav

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                                  • G
                                    gavster2002 @doncastermems
                                    last edited by

                                    @doncastermems

                                    Did you fix this? I also get my roms loaded but retropie menu has gone. Any ideas?

                                    I am using the stab option as I could not get the autostart.sh method to load the roms.

                                    Thanks

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                                    • H
                                      HoustoneD
                                      last edited by

                                      This post is deleted!
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                                      • H
                                        HoustoneD @vxjester
                                        last edited by HoustoneD

                                        @vxjester said in Running ROMs from a Network Share:

                                        Step 10: sudo chown RetroPie: /home/pi/RetroPie

                                        Everything worked out great- thanks! But, can you give any insight on this issue? Rigorously searched around and couldnt find any mention of "invalid spec", but found several mentions of "invalid user"

                                        pi@retropie:~/RetroPie $ sudo chown RetroPie: /home/pi/RetroPie

                                        chown: invalid spec: ‘RetroPie:’

                                        pi@retropie:~ $ ls -l /home/pi/RetroPie
                                        total 0
                                        drwxr-xr-x 2 pi root 0 Oct 19 11:30 BIOS
                                        drwxr-xr-x 2 pi root 0 Oct 19 11:30 retropiemenu
                                        drwxr-xr-x 2 pi root 0 Oct 19 11:31 roms
                                        drwxr-xr-x 2 pi root 0 Oct 19 11:31 splashscreens

                                        I would assume user pi already has root access here. is this the cause, and i am worried over nothing? Sorry, i am trying to figure out how to properly conform to Markdown- does the above warrant codeblock or inline code? Forgive my ignorance .

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                                        • J
                                          Jeero @gavster2002
                                          last edited by

                                          @gavster2002
                                          i Would say for your following boot issues:

                                          after reboot emotion station errors that it can't find system and clicking ok returns me to a command prompt.
                                          or
                                          sudo mount -t cifs -o guest,uid=pi //192.168.0.10/retropie /home/pi/RetroPie
                                          the system boots but there are no games?

                                          that you should first experiment your mount command line directly in the Raspberry shell, in order to detect an potential mount command issue.

                                          By the way, i have the same issue as you when i'm using the network folder:
                                          sometimes the "retropie" item disappear from the emulationStation menu

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                                          • J
                                            Jeero
                                            last edited by Jeero

                                            Hi,

                                            Pi Model: 3B
                                            RetroPie Version Used: v4.0.2
                                            Built From: Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website
                                            USB Devices connected: wireless keyboard dongle, Logitech rumblepad
                                            Guide used: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-Network-Share

                                            i tried the option1, with Autostart.sh, But it does not work.

                                            my mount command is working well, i executed it through the pi SSH shell, then i rebooted emulationStation, and then i succeed in getting files from my network share.
                                            (but i noticed an issue as stated on the message above, the "retropie" item disappear from the emulationStation menu )

                                            but if i boot with this command line included in Autostart.sh, it is not taken into account.

                                            i will try the option 2 tonight, but i wanted to know if someone succeeded with option1 and what would be the issue on my side in that case?
                                            sudo mount -t cifs -o username=xxxx,password='xxxx' //192.168.1.12/raspberry/retropie /home/pi/RetroPie

                                            Thanks a lot !

                                            Regards,
                                            Jeero.

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