Can't open Retropie after installing a theme

jas51384

I'm running the latest Retropie on Pop! OS 22.04 lts nvidia. This is a fresh install of both the OS and retropie. The first thing I did to test this was add the tronkyfran theme to retropie then select it from the UI settings menu. It seems to work then. If I close retropie and try to reopen it it shows a quick Pop!OS crash report as it's loading everything then all I see is a gray screen. I can't get out of it so I have to hard reset. If I go into the es_settings cfg and change it back to carbon it all works fine again. I've read the previous articles about the issue but since they are at least a year old I can't find a solution that works for me. Any troubleshooting tips? Thanks you!!
John

mitu

Have you tried increased the VRAM from the EmulationStation's settings ?

jas51384

@mitu yes, I set it 150. I can try 200 if you think that could help? It's not just the tronkyfran theme either. It looks like a pop os crash that say emulationstation has stop and then the gray screen no way to stop and check the report. It goes so fast.

Well: I was getting the crash with the default theme on first try. After several hard reboots I was able to get in and change the vram. Unfortunately no change to the crash.

mitu

Try running EmulationStation with the --debug flag (from a text terminal) and see where it crashes, then post the last log messages here in the topic.

jas51384

@mitu I don't see anything here.
Debug
is there a way to view the pop os crash report? it disappears so fast I can't read it

mitu

@jas51384 This is not the full log, but if those are the last lines, indeed, there is nothing logged here.

is there a way to view the pop os crash report? it disappears so fast I can't read it

Not sure how that works, but you can run EmulationStation via gdb to catch the error.

gdb -q /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/emulationstation
> run
# crash happens
> backtrace
# error message shown
> kill
> quit

jas51384

@mitu Thank you, I will give this a try. I should be able to report back Tuesday or Wednesday. Work has been getting in the way.

jas51384

@mitu well it just says no stack when I try to run backtrace after the crash.

output from gdb

mitu

@jas51384 it says no stack because there's no process running - ES exits normally.
Can you run again EmulationStation with the --debug flag and post the entire es_log.txt file from $HOME/.emulationstation ?

jas51384

@mitu it only exits normally because I have to force it closed from a gray screen. ES shows in a second screen that I can go to and it will run normally but on initial startup I get a crash window and that gray screen. I would have to manually go to the es screen everytime. I will post the log file shortly.

Edit: when I say screen, I mean window.

jas51384

@mitu
es_log.txt

This is the whole log file. It looks like that gray screen is a Terminal window and ES is in another window. When the crash happens at startup, it forces that gray window to the front and hides the ES window. ES is running while that gray window is up and when I can get it to switch to the ES window it seems to work fine but I haven't really pushed it.

mitu

What's your window manager / Desktop environment ?

jas51384

@mitu my OS? It's Pop! OS 22.04 LTS

mitu

@jas51384 Not the OS, your desktop environment - XFCE/Gnome/Mate/etc.

jas51384

@mitu OH sorry it's the default Gnome