Updated Retropie+Ubuntu 20.04.1 (Blackscreen Issues)

Skullborn

Hello there

Was Updating my Ubuntu and Retropie and there seems to be a black screen that freezes up Ubuntu, save for my mouse. I managed to only to get the EmulationStation booting properly only once, and that comes from Killing the Gnome window repeatedly via terminal and getting lucky. Also have Pegasus FE installed, but that freezes too at the EmulationStation point during the load, then quits.

I have posted the results of my retroarch config file at this link

I am on Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
AMD Ryzen 3 1200 Quad Core Processor
NVIDA GeForce GT 1030 (Before you ask, yes, I tried changing to sdl2 in retroarch config, still nothing, and I uploaded a non x-org driver)
GNOME Version 3.36.3

Let me know if there's anything I'm missing!

mitu

This 'black screen' appears only when starting EmulationStation/RetroArch, or appears during using Gnome ?

EmulationStation has a log file in $HOME/.emulationstation/es_log.txt that may be of interest to diagnose the issue. For RetroArch, run with verbose logging enabled and post the /dev/shm/runcommand.log.

Skullborn

@mitu

Yes, The black screen appears whenever I run rpie, which I had conveniently autorunning whenever Ubuntu booted up prior to updating. And yes, it's only for Emulationstation. I have run other minor programs like Firefox on it without issue. This system is built exclusively for emulation, and so the system only has the basics of Ubuntu+Retropie on it. Mono would be the only outside thing I had installed and that was just to get Skraper running.

Sometimes when I am killing the Gnome systems, I will see flashes of it booting, like it in the middle of booting up emulators (you know when it says loading 13/89 at the bottom) but these frames are frozen and do not progress. I know emulationstation is therefore booting up fine internally, but graphically it's not responding (if that makes any sense). When I do kill gnome after its booted, it usually goes to 3do and I can see the image, but it is frozen and cannot even be killed by the taskbar on the side. Can only be killed with terminal and repeatedly killing GNOME 3-4 times in succession. So it's something either with GNOME or the Graphics Driver, but idk where to go next with those

I will post both logs when I get the chance in the next day or so

NeoZer00

Hello, I am having the same issue after running the update script for Retropie on Ubuntu 20.04 as well. It was working prior to running the update and now when I run EmulationStation it simply opens then closes immediately.

mitu

@neozer00 Run EmulationStation from Gnome terminal with the --debug flag

emulationstation --debug

then post the output.

NeoZer00

@mitu

ec 07 10:41:47 lvl2: EmulationStation - v2.9.6rp, built Dec 7 2020 - 08:00:19
Dec 07 10:41:47 lvl2: Parsing XML file "/opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/resources/mamenames.xml"...
Dec 07 10:41:47 lvl2: Parsing XML file "/opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/resources/mamebioses.xml"...
Dec 07 10:41:47 lvl2: Parsing XML file "/opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/resources/mamedevices.xml"...
Dec 07 10:41:47 lvl2: Creating window...
Dec 07 10:41:47 lvl2: Created window successfully.
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: GL vendor:
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: GL renderer:
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: GL version:
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: Checking available OpenGL extensions...
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: ARB_texture_non_power_of_two: MISSING
emulationstation: /home/mame/RetroPie-Setup/tmp/build/emulationstation/es-core/src/resources/Font.cpp:410: void Font::renderTextCache(TextCache*): Assertion `*it->textureIdPtr != 0' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

mitu

@neozer00 said in Updated Retropie+Ubuntu 20.04.1 (Blackscreen Issues):

Dec 07 10:41:47 lvl2: Created window successfully.
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: GL vendor:
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: GL renderer:
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: GL version:
Dec 07 10:41:48 lvl2: Checking available OpenGL extensions...

It looks like EmulationStation cannot create an OpenGL context and that's why it crashes. I can't reproduce this locally - so it might be something related to the GPU on your system - can you offer some details about your system setup ?
Can you run glxinfo from a terminal, then post the output on pastebin.com ?

NeoZer00

@mitu

Looks like the Nvidia driver I had installed was the culprit. I removed it and used the Nouveau one and Emulationstation now starts but launching games fails. I am troubleshooting further.