Roms keep copying over to the SD card from the USB stick

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Got it.

One more thing: how does exactly the USB daemom service work? The tutorials say I should switch it off if I intend to run roms from a USB stick. How does one relate to another? Naturally, I don’t want the roms to get copied back to the SD.

mitu

Transferring ROMs from an USB stick is explained here - it expects a retropie folder on your USB stick. Running ROMs from an USB stick is explained here - it expects a retropie-mount folder to be present on your USB stick.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu So, apparently, thanks to your help, I finally god rid of the “no space left on device” prompt. Thanks!

However, despite reinstalling the Retropie Menu script, all the parsing problems are still here. Also, the Pi seems to look for gamelists for systems I don’t intend to use, such as PC or ScummVM.

Also, for some reason I can’t vacuum the Snes cache with Skyscraper. The system is just not on the vacuum list, all the others are there (including the empty PC system, which is odd).

Any ideas?

mitu

@gordonfreemanjr said in Roms keep copying over to the SD card from the USB stick:

Any ideas?

Post some logs on pastebin.com, the one from EmulationStation and from running the Skyscraper vacuum command.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Ok, so no wonder I can’t vacuum the cache: I’ve deleted the whole Skyscraper cache on this USB, leaving just the media folders inside the rom folders.

It also means I can’t update gamelists, as apparently they are generated from the cache, not from the contents of the media/rom folders.

I could probably copy the contents of the media folders to the cache folder, revacuum and re-generate the gamelists this way.

Still, this is the least of my problems, so let’s forget this for now:

It takes now the Pi over 40 minutes to boot. It’s very weird: the USB contains roms from 7 systems, about 30-34 GB of data, including the media files. There must something I’ve done wrong.
The “can’t parse Setting file” and a bunch of other parsing errors have disappeared. The only ones left are these referring to systems I’m not using: PC, Sega CD, Atari. There must to be some track of formerly present roms somewhere within the system.

mitu

@gordonfreemanjr said in Roms keep copying over to the SD card from the USB stick:

It takes now the Pi over 40 minutes to boot. It’s very weird: the USB contains roms from 7 systems, about 30-34 GB of data, including the media files. There must something I’ve done wrong.

It depends on the # of roms and files withing the ROM folders. A Pi zero is a slow system anyway.

The “can’t parse Setting file” and a bunch of other parsing errors have disappeared. The only ones left are these referring to systems I’m not using: PC, Sega CD, Atari. There must to be some track of formerly present roms somewhere within the system.

Please post the ES log file, as asked before.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Yes, sorry, I was figuring that out :)

Apparently the log file is too large for Pastebin. Here's the link to the txt file via WeTransfer:
https://we.tl/t-IIvd3mQC1n (still better than pasting it here).

Look like the system spends ages looking for deleted roms. Maybe you'll see something more.

Thanks!

mitu

@gordonfreemanjr said in Roms keep copying over to the SD card from the USB stick:

Here's the link to the txt file via WeTransfer:

I see a few systems have an empty gamelist.xml, which you can probably delete to get rid of the log message, but that's not a problem and wouldn't account for slowing down.

Look like the system spends ages looking for deleted roms. Maybe you'll see something more.

You can turn on the 'Parse Metadata Only' option in EmulationStation and the system would load only what's in the gamelist.xml, without checking the file on disc. That would make loading much faster, but with the amount of deleted/missing entries you have, the game lists would be wrong.
You can of course delete the gamelist.xml files and let EmulationStation re-create them, so you'll not have missing entries. That means you'll probably have to re-scrape again - that's where the SkyScraper cache comes in handy, since it would generate the gamelists (with the media/artwork) without actually re-scraping the data online.

gordonfreemanjr

That’s fine, I have a copy of the cache. I can easily recreate the gamelists.

a. When I do and the gamelists are finally OK: how do I make ES parse them only to speed up the boot process? In the GUI?
b. Where exactly should I delete the missing systems from, so the Pi stops looking fot their respective gamelists?

Thanks!

mitu

@gordonfreemanjr said in Roms keep copying over to the SD card from the USB stick:

a. When I do and the gamelists are finally OK: how do I make ES parse them only to speed up the boot process? In the GUI?

There is a setting in the EmulationStation's menu called Parse Gamelists Only.

b. Where exactly should I delete the missing systems from, so the Pi stops looking fot their respective gamelists?

You don't need the roms' folders, just the gamelist.xml files that are empty. Their names and location are in the log file you posted.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Ok, so having copied the backup cache in, 3 systems are visible on the Vacuum list and 6 are missing from it. I tried rescraping with „only missing” option, so maybe it updates the existing cache in a way it’s discoverable by the vacuum script, but no luck.

I’m thinking about rescraping with both „only missing” and „refresh cache” flags on, but I’m not sure if it does any good.

gordonfreemanjr

Got it to work with the commnand line. I’m regenerating gamelists now, will let you know how it turns out.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Case is closed. Everything is working perfectly. Thanks for your time and help!