Emulationstation Minimized on Autostart (x86 Linux)

skorpien

Hey all. I'm having issues with the autostart feature on an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS system.

Emulationstation is starting as minimized when I select autostart from the RetroPie config menu. I've been trying to search for a solution but it seems like it's a rather new issue.

It's a brand new setup, fresh install of Ubuntu, fresh install of RetroPie 4.8. When the machine boots, the terminal window shows up, emulationstation loads, then is immediately minimized showing only a fullscreen terminal window.

I've tried reinstalling Ubuntu and RetroPie, which worked for a little while, but then it started doing the same thing again.

A second reinstall had minimizing on startup yet again.

The only other reference I've been able to find online is from about a month ago, same Ubuntu and RetroPie version.

I've also tried editing the autostart entry to only run emulationstation, rather than running gnome-terminal and launching emulationstation from within, but it still did the same thing (minus the big terminal window).

I'm thinking this is an emulationstation issue rather than a Linux/Ubuntu one, but I can't be certain. I've tried using the --fullscreen and --fullscreen-borderless arguments for emulationstation, but the first one does nothing and the second one shows the Linux top bar for some reason.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

mitu

Does the same behavior occurs if you're starting EmulationStation through the 'rpie' application shortcut ?

skorpien

@mitu No, launching it from the 'rpie' application shortcut works fine. As does launching it using 'emulationstation' from the terminal. I can only reproduce the behaviour using Startup Applications.

mitu

You should add the rpie shortcut to the Startup Applications, if you added your own starter/script, it may not behave as expected.

skorpien

@mitu How would I do that? rpie isn't a recognized terminal command. To launch RetroPie I use emulationstation. Adding that to Startup Applications produces the same behaviour.

Or do you mean actually adding the desktop shortcut? I've tried adding /usr/local/share/applications/retropie.desktop in Startup Applications, but that fails to launch anything.

mitu

To configure the autostart, just use the setup script to do it - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Debian/#configure-retropie. Doesn't that work ?

skorpien

@mitu That's how I set it up originally.

I ended up installing a different distro, Ubuntu Mate 22.04 LTS, and that seems to have solved it. I think it's an issue with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. I've yet to test it extensively but I'm hoping it will continue working.

Thank you for all of your help. I hope this issue is resolved in the future. I don't mind Mate, but I'm rather fond of plain Ubuntu.

skorpien

So it seems I spoke too soon. The behaviour started again with Ubuntu Mate, but thankfully it was accompanied by an error message.

After research, it seems the retropie autostart script was causing the program lightdm to crash due to a race condition.

Adding the following to /etc/lightdm/lightdm.confhas once again fixed things... fingers crossed...

[LightDM]
logind-check-graphical=true

~~I believe this solution would also work for plain Ubuntu as I think lightdm was crashing silently but still causing emulationstation to minimize.~~

Ubuntu doesn't have lightdm installed, so this solution doesn't work.

Xmeoi

Any solution?
Im having same issue and was searching web and it seems this is the only place where this "bug"was described.

skorpien

@Xmeoi unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure it out. I've since decided to install Ubuntu Mate and customized it instead.

swangdemon

@mitu Hi, my apologies if this problem has been resolved elsewhere, but I’ve scoured the internet and have struggled to find anything conclusive. The default autostart script has worked fine for me on previous versions of Ubuntu, but I am having the same issue in 22.04. Emulationstation starts up as it is supposed to, but is then immediately minimised, leaving a blank terminal window in its place. It’s quickly rectified by alt+tab, but a bit of a hassle without a keyboard or mouse. Happy to make a seperate topic with more info, just testing the waters first

mitu

@swangdemon This seems to be an OS/DM issue, so no solution was implemented in EmulationStation. Other thing I suspect is a libsdl2 bug. What desktop/window manager are you using ?

Can you manually build a newer SDL version from the 2.26.x branch and try to use it just for EmulationStation ?

swangdemon

@mitu said in Emulationstation Minimized on Autostart (x86 Linux):

@swangdemon This seems to be an OS/DM issue, so no solution was implemented in EmulationStation. Other thing I suspect is a libsdl2 bug. What desktop/window manager are you using ?

Can you manually build a newer SDL version from the 2.26.x branch and try to use it just for EmulationStation ?

Thanks for the response! I am currently using the default window manager, which I believe is GDM3. Truth be told, I’m only a casual user, so there’s a lot about *nix that I don’t know, which includes libsdl2. Either way, that gives me a good starting point to look into it further. I will report back if/when I hit a brick wall. Worst case I can roll back to a previous version

Cheers!

mitu

@swangdemon said in Emulationstation Minimized on Autostart (x86 Linux):

Thanks for the response! I am currently using the default window manager, which I believe is GDM3.

No, gdm3 is the login manager. If you're using the default desktop manager, that would be Gnome/Unity (?) on Ubuntu.
But try to see if a newer libsdl2 yields a different result.

swangdemon

@mitu A-ha, I thought it was surely gnome but googled it to make sure and I must have misinterpreted the result. Is it worth trying another, do you think? Might try that if the libdsl route proves unsuccessful.

mitu

@swangdemon It might be easier to use XFCE and switch the default session from Gnome to it, then test to see if auto-start has the same issue (the auto-start config should still work even if the desktop env is switched in this case).

kidracer

Hello,

I too am having this problem. Did anyone figure this one out?

With a fresh build using process from https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Debian/
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Retropie 4.8.2
Emulationstation V2.11.ORP
Retroarch 1.12.0

When manually starting Retropie, it opens EmulationStation and a Terminal session with the EmulationStation program in focus and the Terminal window minimized in the background. All good.

When using the auto start feature, within Retropie-setup>Configuration/Tools>Autostart, Retropie starts up automatically with system start but with the Terminal window in focus and the EmulationStation program minimized in the background.

This result is inconstant with this occurring about 50% of the time.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

mitu

@kidracer have you tried my advice from the previous post - changing the desktop env to Xfce ?
FWIW I've tried replicating the issue with a 22.04 installation, but I couldn't.

kidracer

@mitu I didn't really like the XFCE interface so I went back to Ubuntu 20.04. Autostart works 100% of the time now.
The cocktail table is up and working perfectly again.
The next time I do an upgrade, I'll test it on one of my spare laptops before I put it on my primary :)

Cheers and thanks again for you guidance!

swangdemon

@kidracer @mitu I didn’t end up finding a fix, though, to be fair, I didn’t really try anything. In the end, I had to reinstall for other reasons, so I took the opportunity to drop down to an earlier version of ubuntu