trying to boot from a copy of my sd card, will not boot.

mitu

@jtkblue said in trying to boot from a copy of my sd card, will not boot.:

RetroPie Version Used : not really needed, lul.

Then why post here ?

How to replicate the problem: edit the file path /etc/rc.local and then configure startx to boot automatically.

That's not how you enable X to start automatically.

jtkblue

@mitu sorry about being vauge. maybe (i totally did) did not enable it correctly and messed everything up.

i would really like to know how to edit the path /etc/rc.local on a linux virtual machine, windows, whatever.

thanks

(FOR CONTEXT, THIS IS WHAT I EDITED. https://www.circuitbasics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/lcd-.etc_.rc_.local-after-edit.png)

mitu

You can use any Linux system (on another PC or even a live USB distro like Ubuntu) and mount the SDcard. You can thhen - as root - edit the etc/rc.local file from under the mount folder and remove the offending line.

You can also try to boot the Pi into 'safe mode' by modifying the /boot/cmdline.txt as explained in https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/70527. You'll boot to a command prompt, from where you can re-mount read-write the / partition and be able to edit /etc/rc.local.

If you wish to start the desktop environment at boot, use raspi-config choose the Auto Login to Desktop in the Boot / Auto login menu.

jtkblue

@mitu said in trying to boot from a copy of my sd card, will not boot.:

You can use any Linux system (on another PC or even a live USB distro like Ubuntu) and mount the SDcard. You can thhen - as root - edit the etc/rc.local file from under the mount folder and remove the offending line.

I'm In the ETC folder, but I can't find rc.local. There's things like rc0.d but i can't find rc.local.

mitu

@jtkblue said in trying to boot from a copy of my sd card, will not boot.:

How would I achieve this? I can't even find the file that I want to edit in the folder of the card. Here's what I see.
...

What you're seeing is the boot partition, you'll need to mount the 2nd partition on the sdcard.

jtkblue

@mitu sorry about that, after realizing what i did wrong i already found the retropie partition. check the edited message above for what's wrong now lol

mitu

@jtkblue If you can't find rc.local, then it's not there or the partition is not properly mounted/read.

jtkblue

@mitu nope, found it. I tried to edit it using the mousepad thingy and it won't let me save because permission denied. I would use sudo nano but I have no clue how to edit files on external drives..

any clue?

mitu

Editing files is the same, no matter the location. Use sudo nano _path_to_file_. You can also run mousepad via sudo and browse for the file location.

jtkblue

@mitu in the file browser, it says /media/pi/retropie/etc

so i type

sudo nano /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

and it says it doesn't exist. confused.

says it doesn't exist either for /pi/retropie/etc/rc.local/

mitu

@jtkblue said in trying to boot from a copy of my sd card, will not boot.:

/media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

If you run the following 2 commands, what's the output ?

ls -l /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local
sudo ls -l /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

jtkblue

@mitu said in trying to boot from a copy of my sd card, will not boot.:

@jtkblue said in trying to boot from a copy of my sd card, will not boot.:

/media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

If you run the following 2 commands, what's the output ?
ls -l /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local
sudo ls -l /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

the first one output

-rwxr -xr-x 1 root root 454 Jan 3 23:31 /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

the second one output the exact same thing

mitu

@jtkblue said in trying to boot from a copy of my sd card, will not boot.:

sudo ls -l /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

OK, so if

sudo ls -l /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

shows the listing to a file, then I don't understand why

sudo nano /media/pi/retropie/etc/rc.local

says the file does not exist. Are you sure there's not a typo involved somewhere ?

jtkblue

@mitu BINGO!

apparently, I tried it again after typing it correctly the last 5-6 times in the past 2 hours.

Sorry for wasting your time. I appreciate your help, thank you so much!

boots into emulationstation completely fine now.

the thing is though, i've been trying to make my touchscreen work on the retropie pixel desktop thingy, it's always a tiny bit off from my finger so i can't use it. The website here: https://www.circuitbasics.com/setup-lcd-touchscreen-raspberry-pi/
told me to edit rc.local and put that thing in it, and then it wouldn't load emulationstation.

it's all a huge mess. I'm going to store the recently fixed sd card with retropie on it and i'm going to try to install emulationstation ON top of raspbian on a second sd card i have, if it works, cool i got a touch screen, if not, i got this nifty tiny keyboard i can use.

mitu

Those instructions seem a bit old, you might want to search for recent (Raspbian Buster) instructions. Note that running EmulationStation from a desktop env is not a supported configuration (though some users seem to prefer running it like that).

jtkblue

@mitu oh ho, I know it's not supported. I tried it as my main configuration for a while and eventually it just would not start any games at all. I'm hoping that because it's on a secondary sd card it'll fix the issues i previously had.

If i had a choice, I would totally prefer to have it on top of raspbian but, whatever.